[HN Gopher] Paperback: An encrypted paper-based backup scheme
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Paperback: An encrypted paper-based backup scheme
Author : gbrown_
Score : 58 points
Date : 2021-12-26 09:51 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| It would be really cool if a small decoding binary could be
| printed on the back as a massive QR code. Then the paper would be
| all you'd need to recover the original document.
| [deleted]
| jagger27 wrote:
| I feel like it would be easier to run a JavaScript program in
| 50 years than some binary format. Definitely a tricky question.
|
| Something as important and as a will probably shouldn't be
| encrypted in this fashion. Something more analog would be
| better.
|
| I'm not sure if my descendants would appreciate having to
| compute Shamir and some key derivation function by hand just to
| read my will, but at least I could give complete instructions
| that aren't bound to some vintage program that may or may not
| still be on GitHub in 75 years.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Surely there's a better medium for long-term storage than paper?
| I can see this working for small documents, but if you have to
| print out thousands of pages you mine as well store the data on
| some kind of USB and maybe just print out the key shards.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| It depends what's long term for you. If long term is 10-20
| years then cold disk storage is probably acceptable provided
| you have some redundancy. However if for whatever reason you
| are aiming at 50, 100, or 100+ year storage, this is probably
| the safer approach (however like another comment mentioned, a
| decoding algorithm should probably be provided with the
| documents).
| emptybottle wrote:
| It's a thousand pages, give or take a few. I'll be writing more
| in a week or two. I could make it longer if you like the style. I
| can change it 'round, And I want to be a paperback writer,
| Paperback writer
| sigio wrote:
| Some documentation about how to go about decoding and inputting a
| document should be done.... I still haven't figured out how to do
| this after spending some time first trying to get it build
| (didn't build on debian stable, needed a debian testing chroot).
|
| Now I can get the base64-strings from the qr-codes, but it's not
| clear how to pass this to paperback to decode the main document.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Seems like a nice physical backup for a password manager export
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| The problem is that QR codes are not information dense enough to
| encode large amounts of data efficiently. I have been trying to
| build something similar to this and using various encoding
| methods. So far, I have trouble getting more than about 64k on a
| printed page such that it can be optically recognized. The number
| of symbols in your encoding alphabet is important, and this
| reduces recognition.
|
| I like this project and gives me some ideas on how to enhance my
| solution. Thank you!
| CiTyBear wrote:
| One use case it is you can share different number of key shard to
| individuals. Thus, they have more "power" based on how much you
| trust them.
|
| If this is your will, you can give 3 shards to your sister (that
| you trust absolutely) and requires 4 shards to decrypt it. Your
| "semi-trusted" friends needs to be 4 to decrypt it, but your
| sister only needs to know one of your friend to access.
|
| Written in rust for extra HN creds /s
| artemonster wrote:
| A decade ago it should've been LISP :)
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