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Comment by elwell | Hacker News Reader

What do you do when you are using a different computer and need to login to site?

I use a yubikey that outputs half of the password used to unlock my keypass database, the other half is in my head (so even if they steal my yubi they can't do much). The database is backed on my own owncloud which is hosted on my own vps and replicated on other 3-4 servers (all mine). My little personal cloud setup.

Call me paranoid but it took me half an hour to set it up and the monthly fees for the servers are very very low.

" … hosted on my own vps … "

Might want to think through whether that really counts as "your own". Who's got hypervisor access to the hardware? Any keys or passphrases that ever hit the disk or memory on someone else's hardware should (at least at some levels of paranoia) be considered "possibly compromised".

(I store "sensitive stuff" on AWS/DigitalOcean/other-vps-providers, but only if it's first encrypted locally and the key/passphrase never gets used/stored on the vps. EncFS works pretty well dealing with that for me... I do, though, "trust" 1Passwords datafile encryption enough to take advantage of the iOS/MacOSX sync features they've implemented over Dropbox. That's possibly not achoice I'd make i I thought I were a target of someone like the NSA.)

For some logins, the answer is "Sorry Dave, I can't do that." If I don't have the private cert, or the ssh cert, or the right hole in the firewall - there are many thing I've chosen intentionally to not be able to log in to using someone else's computer.

For lesser security critical logins, I've got my password software (1Password) on my phone (and iPad). For some intermediate level logins, I need my phone or iPad anyway, I've got TOTP two favor auth (using Google's Authenticator app) on a bunch of important stuff (Amazon/AWS, DigitalOcean, Dropbox, Guthub, the email account that all my domain names are registered with and to which password resets go, and a few other things…)

What will you do if your primary computer gets stolen?

Private SSL/TLS certs, ssh keys, and 1Password database are all stored on encrypted fiesystems (EncFS) and synced across four machines (two at work, one at home, and my laptop) using Dropbox (which is another off-site copy, and has revision archives) and/or BTSync. Those four copies are all OS X Time Machine backed up (and revision archived) - and two of those Time Machine backups are rsynced nightly to separate drives in opposite locations - so all up (not couning Dropbox) I've got copies on 10 separate spindles in two physical locations, two of them in a locked filing cabinet (the work time machine and rsync disks).

I've had a "primary computer" stolen before – and I don't intend to ever have that much grief if (when?) it happens again. I'm confident that even if all the electronics from either one of my work or home get stolen, I could be back into fully productive work-mode in half a day and one maxed-out-creditcard at the local Apple store. (If someone hits both my work and home locations simultanously, I suspect I've got bigger problems that whether I'll have angry clients shouting at me before the weekend…)

My first question would be "how often does that really happen?". It's a legitimate concern at first sight, but for me, I pretty much never need to do that since I always have my phone with me.

But if I do need to, I have 1Password on my phone as well and can get the passwords from it.

Presumably you can open your password manager's web service and do it from there.

That or use your phone. Most password managers have apps.

Ok, that makes the most sense to me.

I wouldn't want to use a webservice to look at my passwords. I want to open my password safe locally. Less likely to be snooped upon (though still possible, obviously).

I have the encrypted password file on a usb thumb drive. I remember the master password. I view as fatally flawed any password store that uploads the encrypted password file to a remote server.

If you don't mind paying a small annual fee, Lastpass is a very nice tool for automated password management across devices.

Use a browser add-on for exporting/importing passwords, transfer the exports on an encrypted USB stick.

You can have the password repository in dropbox to sync between different machines, and also use the app

You can. I would not. I don't want my password file uploaded to any remote server.

I don't. I carry my passwords (via 1Password) on my phone, so I'll just use that.

passpack.com

But I would not really be comfortable using it on an unknown computer, unless I had good knowledge that it was properly administered.

I carry a little piece of paper in my wallet that has my private key further encrypted by myself, and that encrypted key is used to decrypt other passwords through a private web/mobile app I made. The top encryption key I have is just some sort of simple algebraic mumbo jumbo formula I used to scramble my private key just a bit, and I change it up once in awhile, and have that written down. What's in my memory is how I jumbled it.

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