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DZone > Security Zone > Strong Encryption and Death

Strong Encryption and Death

Tarus Balog explains to us his plan for disclosing sensitive information to close, trusted friends in the event of his demise. We certainly hope he doesn't meet it anytime soon!

Tarus Balog user avatar by
Tarus Balog
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Jan. 27, 17 · Security Zone · Opinion
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I try to use strong encryption wherever I can. While I doubt it will keep my thoughts from prying eyes forever, at least it should make peeking a little harder.

But it dawned on me: what happens when I die? I want to let my business partners see what is on my encrypted desktop and I know my wife will need access to the files on my systems at home. I could share them with her now, but my passphrases are complex and she isn’t very familiar with the operating systems I use.

Now I’m not planning on dying any time soon, in fact I want to live until I am at least 95 and a half. Why that age? Because that is when Halley’s Comet will return. I saw the comet when I was living in California in 1986 and I could care less about seeing it again, but I do want to be the old guy they interview:

“Back in ’86, now that’s 1986 for you young folks, I was livin’ in Los Angeles. The comet was too dim to see in the city, so we drove out to Joshua Tree…”

Image title

So, how do I safely pass on my important passphrases? This is the solution I chose.

I created a file called “deathnote.txt” which I then encrypted using GPG:

gpg --encrypt --recipient tarus@opennms.com \
  --recipient alice@example.com \ 
  --recipient bob@example.com deathnote.txt

This will encrypt the file so that both Bob and Alice can read it (and I can too). I then sent it to several friends unrelated to them with instructions that, upon my death (but not before), please send this file to Bob and Alice. I also remembered to include a copy of my GPG private key:

gpg --export-secret-keys -a tarus@opennms.com 

Just in case they can’t find it on my systems.

This does require a certain level of trust in my friends, but I am blessed with having several I can count on. As long as I remember to keep it updated this should provide a secure way to pass on this important information, although I hope no one has to use it any time soon.

Comet (pinball) Pass (software) Alice (software) Trust (business) Die (manufacturing) planning

Published at DZone with permission of Tarus Balog, DZone MVB. See the original article here.

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