Selfhosted

40133 readers

500 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.

Resources:

selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
awesome-selfhosted software
awesome-sysadmin resources
Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

How do you manage your encryption keys? (lm.paradisus.day)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm in desparate need of setting up borgmatic for borg backup. I would like to encrypt my backups. (I suppose, an unencrypted backup is better than none in my case, so I should get it done today regardless.)

How do I save those keys? Is there a directory structure I follow? Do you backup the keys as well? Are there keys that I need to write down by hand? Should I use a cloud service like bitwarden secrets manager? Could I host something?

Im ignorant on this matter. The most I've done is add ssh keys to git forges and use ssh-copyid. But I've always been able to access what I need to without keeping those (I login to the web interface.) Can you share with me best practices or what you do to manage non-password secrets?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

There are many ways to go about this. Files like those keyfiles and encryption headers are extra sensitive because (a) they potentially provide access to everything and (b) losing them can block access to everything. Personally, I keep those types of files unencrypted in a directory that stays 100% offline (encrypted backups to external disks only). But there's no reason not to back those files up to an encrypted online repository (where you trust the encryption). Just make sure that's not your only backup of those files for obvious reasons.

A good practice to avoid painting yourself in a corner is to test your backups: Switch off your PC / server, put your mobile devices in a drawer (pretend they're gone), borrow / wipe a cheap laptop. How do you access your backup files using just that laptop?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

But if your encryption keys to your offsite backup are on-site only, doesn't that make your offsite backup worthless in the case where "offsite" is important?

If your house burns down, you don't have your encryption keys to your only backup.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Good catch... and that's why I keep up-to-date encrypted offline backups in two locations (home and office) always. That should be enough really, but I've been thinking about swapping one of those drives with a third backup at one of my relatives' house from time to time, just to make irrecoverable failure even less likely.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So you keep an encrypted backup at work with the decryption key at home, and an encrypted backup at home with the decryption key at work?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

No, that would clearly defeat the purpose of redundant backups. I remember the passphrases for my backups.