75
Condor
5y

Crap.. got myself into a fight with someone in a bar.

Hospitalized, turns out that my knee is bruised and my nose is broken. For some reason the knee hurts much more than the nose though.. very weird.

Just noticed that some fucker there stole my keychain USB stick too. Couldn't care less about the USB stick itself, got tons of those at home and hard drive storage even more so (10TB) but the data on it was invaluable. It held on a LUKS-encrypted partition, my GPG keys, revocation certificates, server backups and everything. My entire digital identity pretty much.

I'm afraid that the thief might try to crack it. On the flip side, if it's just a common Windows user, plugging it in will prompt him to format it.. hopefully he'll do that.

What do you think.. take a leap with fate and see how strong LUKS really is or revoke all my keys and assume my servers' filesystems to be in the hands of some random person that I don't know?

Seriously though.. stealing a fucking flash drive, of what size.. 32GB? What the fuck is wrong with people?

Comments
  • 26
    I am curious about the reason of the fight itself.
  • 6
    get well soon my brother. 🙏
    now tell us more about the fight 👀
  • 17
    I'm guessing reason of fight was one of those Apple vs Android debate got out of control? 😅🙃

    Get well bro, also I'd recommend you to revoke all keys when you have time cause otherwise that thought will always be somewhere in the back of your mind and annoy you..
  • 53
    You're probably fine. The percentage of people that can crack a USB stick AND go outside is rather small.
  • 6
    @toriyaki nobody can insult apple, not under my apple watch!
  • 6
    As long as you've got a good passphrase, you should be fine on the LUKS end. Work on that physical security for the squishy bits though!
  • 2
    duuuuuuude
  • 6
    @Kage @lazyDev even if I wanted to recall the reason behind it, I can't...
  • 6
    Also, don't worry about the knee hurting more than the nose. Noses are relatively insensitive (as long as the bone doesn't stick through the skin) but knees definitely are not. Any little hit and the kneecap will wiggle, giving you a real bad time
  • 4
    Knees hurt like hell, been there.
    Also I'd assume all the keys are fucked and change them. (And why would you carry them on a usb stick on your keychain? You should keep it somewhere safer)
  • 12
    @endor I was relying on LUKS encryption plus the fact that in order for it to get cracked, someone would have to beat me up (well, that happened), and know how to unlock it. Strictly relying on the second bit now.. probably gonna revoke all of the keys soon though. I don't want that to gnaw on me. And the future keychain USB stick will probably get a boost in terms of security by using a key file rather than a password... Maybe I'll keep that key in its own little vault at home then, to add another requirement for unlocking.
  • 6
    Well after one of your last rants... I sort of saw the fight coming :)

    Anyhow, get well.

    As for an USB drive - any chance you lost it during the fight? I doubt anyone would pickpocket you for a fucking flashdrive...

    That's why I don't trust in YubiKeys and similar. They are too easy to lose, esp. when always being carried along.
  • 5
    @netikras I highly doubt that I lost it. It hung on my keychain through a rather strong ring, just like my other keys, a little fob I got from Google and such. None of the other rings were damaged at all, suggesting that someone took it off... My arc lighter got ripped too, because turbonormies thought it to be too dangerous to leave in my possession. All I remember is that they mentioned something about that.. "this looks dangerous". Maybe they gave them both to the local police department.. hopefully.
  • 1
    @Condor Well in that case filing a report might be useful. In case anyone brought your stuff to police, you'd get it back.

    Meanwhile cutting all that drive's contents off all your devices might indeed be a wise move.
  • 1
    @Condor but if you keep the key in a vault at home, then what's the point of carrying a usb stick that you can't unlock?
  • 4
    @endor well.. for the same reason I put it on a flash drive on my keychain in the first place. I want to be in between a thief and that data at all times. I don't want someone to be able to steal the drive from anywhere where I'm not around. Hence my keychain seemed to be the best option.

    As for why I'd keep a flash drive around that I can't unlock? Simple, I don't want to unlock it when I'm not at home. I mean my phones don't even support LUKS, only my laptop and my servers do. Neither of which I carry around too often. All I want to do is having that flash drive on me at all times. And a key that's always left at home separates the 2 a lot more than a password would of course.
  • 1
    @Condor hmm, I see the conundrum. Is there any way you could implement 2fa on that unkocking mechanism? That way, you could still leave the flash drive at home (in a separate location from the unlock key), and even if a thief found/knew about the unlock key, they'd still need a 2fa device, which is easier to replace and carry around compared to a flash drive with all the actual data. (Yubikey?)
    That way, you don't automatically have to replace all the keys and revoke all the certs when someone steals your flash drive, you can just get a new 2fa device and disallow the old one (though you'll have to come up with a good recovery strategy in advance)
  • 2
    @endor not sure if LUKS supports that, but it definitely sounds interesting! I'll look into it.
  • 4
    @endor Actually, regarding that knee.. the incident happened some 48 hours ago, and yesterday.. literally everything felt like torture. Back then I used my crutches quite often too, but they were very intensive on that knee. Now using my desk chair for moving in the house.. at least those casters are useful for something now, haha. But today the pain seems to have decreased quite a lot. How long did it take for you to recover? I've been reading about it a bit on the internet and it seems to be around 6 weeks.. but that's.. well, the internet. At this rate it seems like it could get itself fixed up in a week or so, or at least I hope so...
  • 1
    Most people that can crack it wouldn't steal it.
  • 3
    @Condor I overstreched (without tearing) a ligament while skiing (and then kept skiing for another 4h after that). Basically my upper leg tried going one way, while my foot - and the lower leg, thanks to the ski boots - went the other.
    The next day, every time I bent my knee after holding it still for a minute it felt like getting stabbed with a hot knife. It was swollen as hell too.
    Doctor said it would take about a month to recover if I stayed at home, kept the knee at rest and put no pressure on it. Ended up taking ~6 months before any random pain completely stopped, and a full year before I stopped noticing it after stressing it too much.
    Judging by your description though, you'll probably recover much sooner than that - but I would still suggest easing off that knee for a while, and avoid walking and taking the stairs as much as you can.
    (Yes, I've become quite paranoid about knees and ligaments after that)
  • 3
    @Condor , I hope you feel well soon man.

    I also hope you got to swing back a bit as well.

    Most probably he is a stupid Windows user and he will format the USB stick, no need to worry about it.

    Take some ++ to mitigate mental injuries, sadly that's the best I can do at the moment.
  • 3
    @Quirinus Hehe, after a bit of thinking I got to suspect that too. I don't think that anyone there knew what was on the stick, and indeed.. for just an unknown, off-brand flash drive.. a hacker that didn't know the data on it wouldn't bother, and someone who could justify stealing a €10-ish stick.. I highly doubt that those would have the skills to do so, haha. Maybe my concerns were a bit too far-fetched after all.

    Still gonna revoke and renew that GPG key though.. it's already a few years old and it was due for replacement anyway, so yeah :)
  • 2
    How do people still get in bar fights without going to jail for assault & battery charges or getting sued up the ass?
  • 3
    @monzrmango Europe my dear, we don't sue people that much. Also if none of these two people call the police saying they're being attacked, no arrests. And they won't do that because they are just as guilty
  • 3
    @monzrmango I think it was the bar guys that called the police. All that happened afterwards was a "process-verbaal" (essentially just a writeup of what happened) that got made for it. Meh.. would you prefer I went to jail instead of to the hospital to get treated? :)
  • 4
    @monzrmango people in states have a right to own and carry a firearm as they feel fit. In Europe we are allowed to have fist fights and get away dry if all the parties had a good time and noone feels they need law reinforcement to intervene.

    But hey, at least it's not the Purge once a year ;)
  • 3
    "I'm afraid that the thief might try to crack it."

    First thing: go to your local PD and get a police report. That'll save your ass if they do "crack" it.

    Second thing: The stick was most likely not stolen, you probably lost it, you drunk bastard.

    Third thing: LMAO. You're expecting too much from morons. Very little chance they do something with it IF somebody did stole it.
  • 6
    Why am I not surprised?

    The amount of effort it would take to crack it isn't worth whatever is on it, unless it's $500k in BTC, but you probably wouldn't be carrying that. So. Also, very few people would even know where to begin anyway.

    Revoke your certs/creds and move on.
    And don't pick fights with drunk people.
    It usually ends poorly, win or lose.
  • 1
    Get well soon man!
  • 3
    This is why I keep all my really important encryption details on Github, so it can't get lost.
  • 2
    @kwilliams ooh, in that case what's the link to the repo? 😏
  • 1
    @jOkEr-jAsE
    1) thanks 🙂
    2) unfortunately yes
    3) I have answered the question. I can't recall the event.
  • 0
    This rant is old, lets stop writing to this rant(rantception)
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