**PRE-DRAFT**
4/27/2018
davidwr

Using paper to make a "secure vault" for key-escrow systems

Definitions:

Key-escrow system: A system in which a 3rd party holds backdoor "keys" to many locked "things" - e.g. phones, computer accounts, etc.

Secure vault: A system in which the backdoor keys are effectively protected against unauthorized access.

Summary:

Public/private key pairs are generated.
Private keys are encrypted using a master key.
The encrypted private keys are split into two parts.
Each part is printed out and stored in a separate locked box.

Variations:
Encrypted keys are split into more than two parts.
The master key changes periodically, e.g. every 1000 keys or every week.
Multiple copies of printouts can be made to provide redundancy. If this is done, any verification system needs to make sure the multiple copies are in fact the same.

Example:

System with one master key and with the encrypted private key split into two parts, with an automated verification system.
Each part has the last 50% of the generated public key, a serial number, and a time-stamp, and the serial number of the generating machine, which together serve as a label.

The system consists of two systems: A generator system an an automation system.

The generation system:

Input is the master key, typically the public key of a public/private key pair.
Output consists of three printouts, 1 of which is public and 2 of which are private.
The public printout consists of the label described above plus the generated public key.
Private printout #1 consists of the label described above plus an "part number" indicating "part 1 of 2" and the first 50% of the encrypted private key.
Private printout #2 consists of the label described above plus an "part number" indicating "part 2 of 2" and the second 50% of the encrypted private key.

The input and output of the generation system will be made available to the automated verification system.

The verification system:

The automated verificaiton system will match the two private printouts, decrypt them using the master key which is an input to both systems, then verify that the decryupted private key and the public key provided by the generation system are indeed a match.

Upon successful verification:

The public key is made available to the end user.

Private printout #1 is stored in a secure box labeled "secure box #1."
Private printout #2 is stored in a secure box labeled "secure box #2."

In a typical system, these private keys would be printed on small pieces of paper, similar to the small pieces of paper used by some "pull lever" voting booths used in the United States in the second half of the 20th century.

There would typically be thousands or tens of thousands of such pieces of paper in each secure box before the boxes had to be changed.
As boxes are filled, information is recorded to make it easy to identify which box contains which private keys, based on their labels.
The records concerning the contents of each secure box are not considered secure in the scope of this system, but it may be beneficial to keep control access to these records and store them securely.

The idea is that it would be very rare that any of the secure boxes would ever be opened. If they did need to be opened, it would be a manual, labor-intensive task to find the desired information. No computers or other non-manual devices would be involved in finding the "needle in a haystack" if a search were required. Only highly trusted people would be allowed to conduct these searches.

Search procedure:

If an authorized party presented the key-escrow service with the public key, then:

The key escrow service would verify that the request is legitimate and take other steps required by law, such as notifying all parties that have a right to know that the key has been requested in case they have a right to protest.

They key escrow service would look up the label associated with the public key. The label is described under "The generation system" and "The verification system" above.

Using the label, the key escrow service would identify the secure boxes that hold each part of the key.

Seperately, the boxes would be reviewed by trusted employees under secure conditions. No cameras or other recording devices other than "pen and paper" would be allowed in the controlled environment.

The employees would look for the slip of paper in each box that had the correct label.

The employees would write down a copy of the partial encrypted private key and store it in a sealed envelope or other secure container.

They would restore the contents of the box, re-seal it, and return it to secure storage.

The sealed envelopes from each secure box would be taken to a secure area along with the key used to encrypt them. A non-networked computer in a secure area would take the contents of the envelopes and the key used to encrypt them and produce a candidate private key. It would then match it with the public key. If they matched, it would print out the private key. In practice, this computer would be the same as the verification system described above, except that it would print out the decrypted private key.

The private key would be sent to the authorized entity that requested it using a secure method.

Error conditions:

If an error happens during key generation, printing, verification, depositing the partial encrypted keys into the secure boxes, or making the public key available to the user, that public key is never used. If printouts of the partial encrypted keys wind up in the secure boxes, this is not an error. If necessary, a trusted human is called in to replace the secure boxes, clear any mechanical faults, and reset the system.

If an error happens during the printing of the labels for the secure boxes and this error cannot be recovered either automatically or with manual intervention without compromising the contents of the secure boxes, all public keys associated with those secure boxes will be considered invalid and not used.

If the private key used to encrypt the secure boxes is compromised, all public keys produced after the point of compromise will be considered invalid and not used. Optionally, all public keys whose private keys were enrypted with that key will be considered invalid and not used.

If the contents of a secure box are ever compromised, the public keys associated with that secure box should be considered compromised. If possible, they should not be used. Recalls or destruction of devices or accounts depending on these keys may be warranted.

Discussion of variations:

Encrypted keys are split into more than two parts:
By splitting the keys into more than two parts, it makes an actual compromise more difficult. It also makes key retrieval more difficult. However, it makes it easier to have a malicious party compromise one box for the purpose of invalidating all keys associated with that box, since he will have more targets (boxes) to choose from.

The master key changes periodically, e.g. every 1000 keys or every week.
By controlling how often the master key changes, it reduces the impact of a compromised master key. On the other hand, it means there are more master keys to protect.

Multiple copies of printouts can be made to provide redundancy. If this is done, any verification system needs to make sure the multiple copies are in fact the same.
More copies means more redundancy, but it also means more possibilities for either a true compromise or a "forced discard attack" where the goal of the attacker is not to compromise a key but to force the key-escrow service to discard many keys, thereby increasing their cost of doing business.

Vulnerabilities:

This system is inherently vulnerable to false requests which are clever enough to be indistinguishable from a legitimate request.

Human vulnerabilities, such as a compromised or corrupt employee, are always possible. Mitigating these is beyond the scope of this document.

Physical vulnerabilities, such as the secure boxes not being secure from theft or destruction, can be mitigated by creating and maintaining multiple copies of the information held in the secure boxes.

Summary:

By using paper printouts of an encrypted private key, never storing the private key in any electronic system for more than a few seconds, and never storing it in any encrypted system, we can provide a key-escrow system in which the escrowed keys are immune from automated attacks.

This system also considers slow, labor-intensive, high-cost information retreival a desirable feature. By imposing a high high delay and a high monetary cost - which will presumably be paid for by the requesting party - it strongly discourages requests for key retreival.

Patentability:
This was written as an off-the-cuff description of how to secure the private keys after reading 'A few thoughts on Ray Ozzie's "Clear" Proposal' by Nathan Green dated April 26, 2018 ( at https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/04/26/a-few-thoughts-on-ray-ozzies-clear-proposal/ and https://web.archive.org/web/20180427000040/https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/04/26/a-few-thoughts-on-ray-ozzies-clear-proposal/ ).
I have some knowledge in technical issues but I am not a security expert.
If I can think of this in a matter of hours, that's proof that there is nothing above that isn't, pardon the pun, "patently obvious."
It is likely that anything closely related to this is also patently obvious.

Errors:
I have not proofread the above. It probably contains ommissions, inconsistencies, and other technical errors. I'm posting it to demonstrate that any ideas along these lines are obvious.

How to play a game is knowledge.
How to win a game is intelligence.
What game to play is wisdom.

Or as a one-liner:

Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.

An application from half a century ago:

Knowledge is knowing the rules of golf and knowing the wind speed and all other relevant playing conditions.
Intelligence is turning that knowledge into the lowest possible score.
Wisdom is not embarrassing your boss or your client on the links.

Or as a one liner:

Knowing how to play golf takes knowledge, playing your best takes intelligence, losing to your boss on purpose takes wisdom.

--
Posted to Slashdot 2018-02-17.

I think the wording above is original, but as they say, "there is nothing new under the sun."

I'm sure I've heard or read something along these lines before.

As of today and for the past few months, cnn.com sucks. They have so many scripting and click overlays or whatever generating ad content it takes up to 30 seconds to load on my fast home computer with good Internet connection.

Worse, it grinds Chrome almost to a halt. If I click the close box, it can take over 5 seconds to actually close that awful cnn.com tab. Other tabs are hindered.

After Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton mentioned the "alt right" as part of her "basket of deplorables," interest surged in this political movement. Unfortunately, no one knows what it is.

The Alt Right is the realist Right-wing that, unlike the public right-wing, speaks taboo truths. We cannot talk about differences between social classes, races, ethnic groups, genders and individuals. That offends our egalitarian pretense that we adopted with The Enlightenment.

In addition, there is an "underground right" which has been dominated by a single issue, racial nationalism, which both ignores ethnic nationalism which is the traditional domain of nationalism, and sidesteps all the other issues necessary to address in order to have a functional civilization.

The best way to understand the alt right is to see that our society has gone insane following a pretense, egalitarianism, and that this has made it socially unacceptable to notice certain truths as well as the failures of egalitarian society. "Noticing" is the sin of our time.

The alt right has risen to speak the plain realist truth: our civilization is declining, and egalitarianism is both a partial cause and the opposite of a solution, so we need to shatter the taboo line and start talking realistically about things again as we were able to before the World Wars.

Leftism has been steadily taking over Western civilization since the French Revolution, and during that time, our technology has increased, but everything else has declined. The cause is not capitalism, climate change or inequality, but that Leftist does not work.

For this reason, the alt right has risen up to speak the plain truth and avoid the political pretense. The alt right has several general tenets which can be summarized as:

* Ethnic nationalism
* Distrust of egalitarianism and socialism
* Hierarchy
* Culture
* Gender differences and complementary roles
* Need for some transcendental goal beyond materialism

These are concepts so foreign to the modern citizen that these people react as if they had seen a UFO when these concepts are mentioned. This gives us a clue that these are not forgotten ideas, but denied ideas, and the only way to shatter denial is to break the taboo line as the alt right attempts to.

Another good summary comes from Alternative Right journal:

Equality is bullshit. Hierarchy is essential. The races are different. The sexes are different. Morality matters and degeneracy is real. All cultures are not equal and we are not obligated to think they are. Man is a fallen creature and there is more to life than hollow materialism. Finally, the white race matters, and civilisation is precious. This is the Alt-Right.

An article in nytimes shows that millions of Americans choose not to pay insurance premiums but instead only get insurance coverage when they need it because the premiums are more expensive than government penalties of not buying insurance and because simultaneously the government forces the insurance companies to cover anybody regardless of any pre-existing conditions.

Back in July of 2012 I explained that ACA is unconstitutional and that the SCOTUS was completely political and wrong but also I explained that ACA and the very concept of insurance are absolutely incompatible.

I am going to use two of my quotes from that journal entry here:

1.

2.

the quotes above explain that people who are allowed to buy insurance only when they get sick will do so because 1. Insurance will become more expensive but the penalty for not buying the insurance is going to be lower than the cost of insurance and 2. The insurance companies will be forced to accept everybody with pre-existing conditions.

This means that no insurance company can actually run an insurance business in this government system without getting government bailouts, be it via taxes or other mechanisms (TARP comes to mind).

It is amazing how gullible so many people can be, looking straight into the same information that I am looking at and not connecting the dots at all. I was ridiculed on explaining these extremely obvious points (extremely obvious if one takes 10 seconds to think them). Of-course people prefer not to think about anything but then they miss the most obvious consequences that are going right towards them because of past actions.

There are more predictions in that journal post I wrote back in 2012, they will all come true, especially the points about bailing out insurance companies and generally worsening the level of coverage.

Now, I am not arguing that people should go without insurance, I am arguing that government shouldn't be forcing anybody into any product or service at all, all of these matters should be left to the private sector, which takes care of things like insurance and like medical care for profit, which is the preferred way of running things - for profit, thus ensuring that things are done efficiently while providing good customer service, all of this is the exact opposite of how governments do business (inefficiently and without actually treating customers as clients).

In the last year or so there have been numerous stories on /. on the subject of Universal Basic Income (UBI). Many so called 'libertarians' left a number of comments on how they are supporting UBI because they think it might be more efficient than other forms of welfare.

Whether welfare is efficient or not is really irrelevant from point of view of individual freedom, putting a lipstick on a pig doesn't change the nature of the animal but I do want to bring to their attention this simple fact: UBI is the modern version of Communism and just like all other forms of collectivism, this form is doomed to misery, oppression, murder and finally economic failure.

Communism is absence of private ownership of means of production, possibly State ownership or in case of Marxism some form of collective non-State sharing. For voluntary forms of Communism or Marxism there is no need to reinvent the wheel, go to a modern day kibbutz, where people are participating voluntarily and this might be the best argument for *voluntary* form of cooperation to date.

However this is not the subject of my post. Here I am looking at the UBI imposed by the State, where the income taxes are collected from each person according to his or her income level (ability) and everybody is getting some minimum amount of money out of that pool on a monthly basis.

First of all automation, outsourcing and other forms of efficiencies are cited as the reasons for all of these UBI related ideas, so it is proposed that in some not so distant future people will no longer be able to earn a living by holding a job, because American (and maybe European) people are uncompetitive when it comes to automation and foreign labour. The reality is that labour and capital are always in competition and it is not necessary that capital should always win against labour in the market. Capital wins where government makes labour uncompetitive with various rules, laws, taxes and government intervening on behalf of unions that make it too expensive to hire labour and make it more practical to automate or outsource.

Once the labour is uncompetitive due to government intervention into the market the argument becomes that without UBI there will be no more jobs for people to take and so UBI is proposed as a form of welfare that is supposedly more efficient. In reality the reason why UBI is proposed has nothing to do with efficiency but everything to do with marketability of that concept. It is much easier to sell UBI to the public, majority of which is actually still working under the current system than to sell a welfare system that excludes people based on their income level. The argument is the same nonsense that was used to push through the SS and EI. Since everybody is supposedly going to receive the benefits it is sold not as a form of welfare (which has stigma attached to it) but as a form of universal entitlement that everybody gets.

SS and EI benefits (as well as Medicare) are completely unnecessary for the people who are self sufficient, the people running profitable companies, people who are much better at investing their money than a modern State apparatus could ever be. Yet SS and EI are advertised as 'universal' to make them look as if they are not a form of welfare but instead a form of insurance. Of-course the people who do not need SS and EI benefits also absolutely do not need to pay into the SS and EI system through payroll taxes. Yet without them paying into these systems the payments would be in even more deficit than they are today. The proponents of SS and EI state that these programs are sustainable and would be even more sustainable if the wealthy people didn't have a cap at 100K or so that EI and SS percentages are taken from. Of-course those are the very people (the wealthier income earners) who do not need SS and EI in the first place, they shouldn't be in those systems, they don't need that form of welfare and they shouldn't be paying those taxes. Originally SS was set up for widows and orphans, not for everyone. Eventually it was extended to everybody else to make those ponzi scams workable much longer. The self employed were excluded from the system completely, they could afford their own retirement and other savings, they didn't have to pay into those programs, eventually they were forced to pay into them to make the ponzi scams run longer. Today the argument is that the wealthy should not have a cap for SS and EI payments to make those ponzi scams run longer yet.

UBI would be similar to SS in a way making it 'SS for all', not only for the retired. But why am I defining UBI as a modern version of Communism? Lets start from the obvious: everybody who works will have to pay into UBI and everybody who does not will not be paying into it. So this is a technicality, but basically it says: from each according to his ability to each according to his need. However under Communism there cannot be private means of production, there is either State ownership of productive resources or some voluntary collective ownership (like in a family or in a kibbutz). So the real question would a UBI system mean that the ownership and operation of productive resources will be nationalized and otherwise collectivized? My contention is that it is inevitable that a UBI regime requires nationalization and collectivization of resources and of all means of production. I will explain this in detail and I will start with a simplified model.

Consider two villages where both villages share common currency (dollars):

* Village A has a population of 10 people, each one of them is working in something productive. There is a farmer, there is a blacksmith, there is a hunter, there is a doctor, there is a shoemaker, etc.

* Village B has a population of 10 people, one of them is a milk farmer who owns a cow, the rest are either unemployed or are service sector workers, they do not possess means of production.

The milk farmer produces 10 litres of milk a day that he can sell at $1 a litre thus making $10 a day. The farmer sells the milk for dollars but the reason he wants to receive dollars is to buy goods produced by other workers. The farmer wants to buy some bread, shoes, tools, he sometimes needs to visit a doctor. The farmer also may pay for some service like for a haircut. The people from village A are able to supply the farmer with the goods exchanged for his dollars, the people from village B are able to supply him with some services.

A person from the B village (an unemployed individual) decided to start a campaign for equality in the village because the income levels are so different. The milk farmer can make $10 and a service sector worker can only make a small fraction of that while an unemployed person does not get to eat unless he can figure out something useful to do as a service or he begs or robs somebody. The campaign starts picking up momentum across the B villagers since they agree, they are all poorer than the milk farmer. Village B forms a government and collectively introduces a motion that requires that everybody in the village must get a UBI of minimum $1 a day. For this to work each one of the villagers must contribute what they are able to make the total sum of $10 a day so that the $10 can be distributed to each villager at $1 a day. The total taxable income of the B villagers is maybe $15, $10 of which comes from the daily earnings of the milk farmer. A UBI income tax is established and the milk farmer is now taxed at about 80%, which makes the 80% of UBI amount and the remaining 20% come from the rest of the villagers.

At this point the milk farmer looks at his income of $10, $8 of which is taken away and $1 is returned to him, making his daily net income $3 and he decides that it does not make sense to generate income in the village. So instead of selling his milk in both villages, he moves most of his sales to village A, where he now makes $8 out of the daily $10 and maybe he is able to sell $1 worth of milk in village B. Then he leaves the $8 in the bank in village A and only takes home $1 a day. All of a sudden the daily UBI taxable income in the village B falls from $15 down to $6. Since there are 10 people in the village it is not possible to split the $6 among them at $1 amounts and besides this would mean that even at the taxation level of 100% there is still a UBI deficit of $4 a day.

B villagers (except for the milk farmer) get together and decide that this will not do, they have to make sure that they have their $1 a day of UBI but to achieve this they have to force the milk farmer to bring his income home. Milk farmer does not agree but he is met with overwhelming force of 9 guns pointing in his direction. At this point the farmer's ownership of his property, his means of production are confiscated from him because he is unwilling to work within the system. He might decide to continue working within the system but again, from point of view of how the business is done he has no choice in the matter, he is no longer the owner of his private property and of his means of production. It is nationalization for all practical purposes, whether the milk farmer goes with the program or not. Eventually of-course there is a movement to ensure that nobody with such horrible background as a private property owner can actually live at any level above somebody with much more acceptable background (like that of a labourer or that of an unemployed, the formerly unemployed are the ones with the most time to set political agenda, normally they will end up in the top echelons of the newly formed government).

This is actually the road that was taken a number of times on this planet where 'social justice' doctrines have been taken to their logical conclusion, the end result is overall poverty, destruction of the means of production given that nobody is actually allowed to own productive property as to not ascend above the rest and generally economic calamity that comes some time after the installation of this type of a regime.

UBI is a modern form of Communism, it is the rose under another name or more to the point it is the proverbial lipstick on a pig.

Texas republican senator Ted Cruz is leading the fight to do the right thing regarding (non)renewal of the Patriot Act, to protect our Constitutional rights. Our other senator, John Cornyn, wants to renew the Patriot Act in full. Here is my letter to Cornyn.

As a career security professional, I implore you to reconsider your position regarding the Patriot Act, the USA Freedom Act, and the Fourth Amendment.

  For twenty years I have worked to keep protect American citizens, interests, and our way of life. Currently, I am employed at TEEX, where I work with our National Emergency Response And Rescue Training Center, assist in homeland security training, and support our role as a founding member of the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium. I do this work in order to protect the American way of life, that we might be the beacon of freedom that the founders envisioned. The antithesis of this would be that the United States would be taken over by those who would subjugate the citizens. Our role, sir, is to protect Americans from not one specific foreign threat, but from any and all who would threaten our Constitutional liberties. Your current position, senator, places you on the wrong side of this fight. Please reconsider whether you wish to be the force fighting against the Constitution, against the fourth amendment, and against the American way of life. We work today, and will work at election time, to realize the vision of America as the brightest beacon of freedom and liberty in the world.

The above is my personal opinion only and does not reflect any opinion held by my employer.

[original date Wed Feb 11, '15 10:52 AM ]

SSDs already use wear-leveling technology that effectively turn all file-updates into copy-on-write operations.

If SSD devices would keep track of the old copies so that an operating system or SSD-vendor-supplied data-rescue-utility could easily treat non-overwritten data as if it were a "shadow copy"
AND
if the SSD would hide that data from the host computer unless a particular switch or jumper was set,
THEN
it would aide in data recovery after a ransomware attack.

Why hide it from the host when the switch is not set? If the "shadow copy" IS visible to the OS, all the ransomware has to do is write to the disk until the data it wants to erase is no longer there in the "shadow copy." If it is invisible to the host, the ransomware has to write enough data to overwrite all existing "shadow copies" to guarantee success.

Why would a user have the switch on all the time? Backups.
Having a hardware-based "shadow copy" mechanism that the backup software or host OS understood would make backups easier without the necessity of the host OS or filesystem having to implement a shadow-copy system of its own.

--------------------------
[Followup added 5/18/2017 8:08PM UTC, see also https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10630029&cid=54443823 "You need hard-to-erase disks" which is a reply to https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/05/18/1757205/wannacry-makes-an-easy-case-for-linux ]

Drive firmware that implemented data-preservation for 72 hours:

All logical blocks are marked as either "in use," "available to be written," or "pending until X" where "x" is a time, in seconds, that the device has received power since it was first initialized.

When a device received a request to write to a logical block, it would see if there was an available logical block. If there was, new data would be written to the new logical block and the old logical block would be marked as "pending until [72 hours from now]."

If there was no available logical block, the write would fail.

An "available logical block" is defined as one that has either never been written to or as one who is "pending until" some time in the past.

A more robust implementation would have "spare logical blocks" that could be used:

If there is no available logical block but there is an available spare logical block, the roles would be swapped:
The block containing the old block would be marked "pending until [72 hours from now]" AND it would be marked as a spare block.
A spare block would be marked as "active" (i.e. not a spare block) and the new data would be written to it.

If "spare logical blocks" are used, then all logical blocks - both spare and active - would have a unique "drive-logical block number."

Under normal circumstances, spare logical blocks and the drive-logical block number and related meta-data would not be visible to the host computer, but they might be made available in a rescue situation by shorting a jumper or issueing special commands to the firmware.

An even more robust implementation would keep a journal of when each block was written to, when each block changed state between live and active and when each one had its "pending until" value changed. This could be used for restoration of recently deleted data.

Considerations:

Host system:

Operating systems would need to be aware that drives may report "success" when deleting data but that the deletion would not result in an increase of free space. Likewise, they would need to be aware that the reported free space may increase at any time for reasons that are opaque to the host system.

Data storage technology:

In situations such as solid-state drives where data must be deleted in very large chunks, the firmware would treat all logical blocks which were in use or which had an unexpired "pending until" time as if they contained data, and treat other logical blocks as if they did not. Physical blocks which did not correspond to an active logical block would be treated as if they did not contain data.

Updated 2018-02-17

Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.

--
Updated 2016-07-08 (the day after a multi-criminal police shooting in Dallas, Texas, USA, leaving 5 police dead, 7 other police injured, and 2 non-police civilians injured)

#IAmDallas - remembering the fallen of 7/7/2016

Updated 2016-04-25 (temporary/for a few weeks)

Ed D., rest in peace my friend, 1968-2016, you were a true fan's fan.

Updated 2014-08-14
All your e are belong to Mother Nature.

Past sigs:

http://slashdot.org/journal/281635/signature-line-update-2012-04-23

http://slashdot.org/journal/94557/my-sig-lines

Storing a private key "in the cloud":

Key is K1. Key is thousands of seemingly-random bits, probably based on a pair of 1024-bit-or-larger prime numbers. You typically store K1 on your computer using a good encryption algorithm. Your password to decrypt the key is P1. P1 is typically tens of characters. Decrypting K1 with P1 is a fast (in human-time-scale) operation, under a second.

Although K1 is typically used to encrypt or decrypt data, for the purposes of this document, K1 is the thing to be encrypted. It will not be used to encrypt or decrypt anything.

Problem:

How to safely store a backup of key K1 online such that the end user can access it from any device if he has both the password P1 and something else that is not mathematically related to K1.

Method 1, the "something else" is a one-time pad:

Create a random one-time pad, R1, which is the same size as K1.
"Encrypt" (XOR) K1 with R1 then encrypt both with P1, creating the safe copy S1. Store S1 online.
Print off a copy of R1 such that it can be easily photographed and re-constructed. Store R1 or an encrypted version of it in a safe place, such as a safe-deposit box or distributed in parts to trusted secret-keepers.
Without R1 it is provably impossible to extract K1 from S1, so S1 is "safe."
R1 by itself is useless.
R1 with S1 constitutes a compromise but it will mean the attacker has to either guess P1 or exhaustively search for it.

If the person loses their local copy of K1, they can use R1, P1, and S1 to reconstruct K1.

Method 2, create a file S2 which from which is computationally hard to extract K1 without P1, acceptably moderately difficult to extract K1 with P1 and no other information, and easy to extract K1 with P1 and "something else" not related to K1.

For example, create a one-time pad R2 which consists of P1 combined with some random-ish filler-number B2 whose size is dependent on how "moderately difficult" it can be to extract K1 given only P1.

If this pad R2 is at least as long as K1, proceed on as in Method 1: "Encrypting" (XOR) K1 with R2 and encrypting both with P1, creating a safe copy S2. As neither P1 nor B2 are known or predicatble, S2 is safe.
The time to recover K from S2 with only P1 will be the time it takes to go through all (or, on average, half) of the possible values of B2. Since the length of B2 was chosen in advance based on how hard this decription should be, K1 will be recoverable in a predicable, acceptable amount of time. With B2 and P1 recovering K1 from S2 is quick.

If the pad R2 is not as long as K1, one option is to re-use the one-time pad and as such will not satisfy the goal o being "comptationally hard to extract K1 without P1," but it may be good enough for some applications.

A different solution is to encrypt K1 with P1 (the file that is normally stored on the person's local computer will qualify) then encrypt the result with either B2 or some combination of P1 and B2 to create S2. The difficulty of extracting K1 from S2 with only P1 depends on the time it takes to go through all (or, on average, half) of the possible values of B2. Depending on the lenghts of P1 and B2 and the encryption algorithms used, this may not be safe enough. With B2 and P1, recovery is quick.

This method has the advantage that the "something else," B2 in this case, need not be kept at all.

A typical scenario where the "B2" method would be preferred over the "R1" method is where it is acceptable if key K1 becomes unavailable for an extended period of time in exchange for a zero-risk that an adversary will acquire or discover R1.

Wow, it's been 15 years but I've finally got my own personal troll! :-)

I must apologize to everyone I've ever called a troll now that I've seen a real one. Yeah, there are trollish comments, but this... it's a different league. If you ever wondered who these brain-damaged morons were who set up geocities homepages with blinking purple text on blue background with red dots in Comic Sans - that kind of different league.

Now it does make me wonder about trolls in general. Has there been a study on this? I really wonder if psychologists have tackled this because quite honestly, you cannot be mentally stable and post in this and this content at the same time. So I do wonder if trolls on the Internet (the real trolls, not the people occasionally posting something stupid) do have a mental problem. It definitely looks like it. Probably insecurity issues, definitely an exaggerated need for attention, might be related to borderline syndrome or schizoprenia.

And, of course, the Internet provides:

• The Worst Internet Trolls Might Be Mentally Ill
• Internet trolls are narcissistic psychopathic sadistic
• Internet trolls might be mentally ill
• Most Internet trolls are mentally ill
• If Trolls Are Actually Mentally Ill People, What Do We Do About It?

As someone who has had to deal with family members suffering from mental illness, let me tell you that it's not funny. So despite the fact that they are, in fact, obnoxious, aggravating assholes, these sad little fucks also need help and their miserable little existence is not something you'd want to trade for yours, no matter how much you think your life sucks. Trust me, with a mental illness on top, it'll suck more.

Obviously, we can't offer therapy to people who usually comment anonymously and will often go to great lengths to avoid being tracked down. What we can do, however, is get a better understanding for how they act this way (they can't help it, mental illness is stronger than your conscious mind) and that the best thing we can do for them is to not continue the feedback loop. "Don't feed the trolls" - old wisdom there.

The last link in that list contains a few more ideas.

Now that I'm at the end, I kind of regret the smiley face at the top. But I'm leaving it in because this journal entry is a bit of a journey, even if it is short. Thanks to some Internet resources, a bit of research and connecting the dots, I've come a short way, changing my mind a little on this particular sub-sub-sub-part of life.

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A short additional statement on how to treat trolling. From what I've gathered from the resources above, a few comments (both here and in the various spammed threads) and my own life experience:

First, don't feed the trolls. Most of them seek attention, so if you stop giving it to them, they become frustrated and go away. Notice that they seek attention, not validation. A rebuke or an angry rant or even a shootout of personal insults satisfies them as much as anything else. Much like the old PR saying "there is no negative publicity", it is all about the attention itself, not about its content.

Second, stand your ground. Do not leave the site or stop commenting just because you're being trolled. It takes a bit to do that, yes. Trolls consider it a "victory" if they shut you up, either by simple flooding or by frustrating you enough to disappear. In their twisted minds, it gives them validation and somehow proves that they were right.

Third, if you see someone else being trolled, give them support. Doesn't take much - a single sentence is more than enough. Someone under attack by a real troll is being flooded. The troll will commonly post under multiple aliases or otherwise attempt to appear as more than one person. Psychological experiments such as Solomon Asch's show how we humans as social animals experience conformance pressure. So give that other person support by showing him that the flood he's getting is no the only opinion around. It doesn't matter if he consciously knows it's just one troll, the pressure is subconscious.

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I'd like to have comments disabled on this journal entry, for obvious reasons, but you can't publish a journal entry with comments disabled, so... 1000:1 bet that he's stalking the journal as well and will add his drivel below?

Also, if the formatting looks atrocious, turn off beta and revert to classic. Seriously.

A self-proving identification card:

Display in human-readable and computer-readable form:
Identifying information such as name, card number, issuer/certifying agent, expiration date, face or thumbprint, signature, etc.

Display the same in a computer-readable form. For easy-to-scan things like letters and numbers that are on the card in a pre-defined layout, the human-readable form and computer-readable form may be identical.

For things like a photo, the computer-readable form may be a simpler version, such as an 8- or 16-color 64x64 bitmap.

Have the comptuter-readable form be digitally signed by the issuer/certifying agent and have the signature on the card in both a computer- and human-readable form.

Have the scanning device display the computer-read data in a human-readable form so that a human being can compare what is on the screen with what is on the card.

The same human being would compare what is on the card with either another form of ID or, if the card had a picture or thumbprint, with that of the person presenting the card.

OPTIONAL:
Some information on the card could be encrypted and require a password or other authentication token to decrypt.

Other than this optional part, the card would be "self proving" provided that the public key of the issuer/certifying agent was available to the authentication terminal.

and so it starts. The Chinese government decided to stop buying up US Treasuries and they are likely not going to roll over the US bonds that they already own, that would be Trillions of dollars that the Fed will have to print to buy up this incoming flood of the old Treasuries and without the Chinese in the US bond market, the Fed will have to buy up all of the new issued debt as well.

In this case what is good for the Chinese is bad for the Americans, Chinese are going to see a long needed deflation finally, while the Americans will see massive amounts of inflation, so much of which was exported to China previously, coming back.

Since last I journalled here, I have survived another bout with cancer (this time osteosarcoma, see my homepage in the cancer section for the long story). This time I come away permanently disabled (my ulna nerve in the left arm is pretty much useless leaving me with absolutely no sensation in my left pinky, half my left ring finger, the top of my forearm, most of the top of my hand and a portion of my palm) with a metal plate (titanium or surgical steel, I forget right now and am too lazy to look at the surgical report right now) and 8 screws holding my upper arm together.

I'm a licensed electrician, a handyman, and licensed business owner with a pick-up truck (redneck style, too). No kids, am highly active on Facebook and Twitter, kind of active on Google+, and occasionally still messing around with /.

Not much else to say that you can't find on my homepage.

On November 21, 2012, Hostess Brands was shut down and went through a bankruptcy procedure to restructure its debts. On June 7, 2013, Hostess is open for business again under the new management.

This is an example of what free market based restructuring looks like after a company goes through normal bankruptcy due to no longer being able to operate and carry on with its fiscal responsibilities to the lenders, bond and share holders. Obviously the restructuring made the company profitable again, the plants and equipment were bought at auctions, the unions and various obligations to those unions written off as they should be.

The socialist/fascist/collectivist media is complaining full force that many people lost their jobs, of-course that was the point - restructuring debts, restructuring operations, streamlining operations, ensuring that the business can continue without impossible liabilities.

If it were up to the socialists/fascists/collectivists, the government would have stepped in (right into it) and bailed out the unions as it did in case of GM and some others. Of-course GM is going to fail again because it is still structurally unsound, even more so than before.

Had GM been allowed to go through the same bankruptcy procedures, the plants would have been bought up in auctions by more responsible owners at large discounts and made profitable again, plants and equipment don't go to waste, capitalism reclaims discarded pieces of business to rebuild them specifically because they have no liability baggage attached to them after restructuring.

Instead when the government steps in, it ensures that the business continues as usual, the only way governments know how - by stealing from actual owners and loading business with more liability and debt ensured by the tax payers.

It is a good thing that Hostess was allowed to go bankrupt, GM and all the banks should have also been allowed to go bankrupt, they would have re-emerged, clean slate, made profitable again in a sustainable manner.

This time capitalism won, the brand is back in business and people can enjoy their wonder breads and whatever other products named with plenty of sexual innuendo.