Andrew Gallagher wrote: > On 11/08/2020 19:57, Stefan Claas wrote: > > So, to sum it up (I know you prefer Tails) would you agree that > > sooner or later the community should develop strategies, in form of a > > best practice FAQ (cross-platform), to no longer use encryption > > software on online devices and work out strategies to use offline > > devices and how to handle this data securely over to an online > > device, until proper and affordable hardware encryption devices for > > online usage are available? > > The problem with best practices is that they are context-dependent. Any > FAQ that steps outside the purely technical domain into operational > security will be misleading at best, and outright dangerous at worst. I > am a Tails user, but I only use it for specific things - I don't boot it > up for my everyday work (that would be insane, given my job). But my > threat model is very different to that of others, so I would never > presume to tell them that my best practice should be theirs. > > Hardware encryption devices are already plentiful. The problem is that > secure hardware comes at a huge cost in flexibility, meaning that only a > small part of our computing landscape will ever be "secure hardware". > That's why we have Yubikeys, smartcards, HSMs, Nitrokeys, etc. A small, > limited-functionality device is much more likely to be secure because it > is much easier to audit. Anything with the breadth of functionality of a > general-purpose computer will never be fully trustworthy. Your CPU is an > entire GP computer, buried in another computer. Same with your SSD > drive. A USB-C *cable* now has more computing power than the Apollo moon > mission. It's software all the way down.
Thank you very much for your reply, much appreciated! > No, you should not stop using encryption software on online devices. > That would be insane. We should be adding more encryption at multiple > levels, so that compromise of one layer of encryption does not mean a > compromise of the entire system. Defence in depth is the only long-term > sustainable strategy. While I personally stopped using online encryption, long ago, after my Linux system was hacked, I like to mention (in case people do not know) that YubiKeys and Nitrokeys allow also login-in protection via 2FA and that than sudo usage requires also tapping on the YubiKey, besides pw usage. Not sure if it is the same procedure with a Nitrokey. Regards Stefan -- my 'hidden' service gopherhole: gopher://iria2xobffovwr6h.onion _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users@gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users