Securely share files between computers with a USB drive.
Private keys (SSH and GPG) are difficult to manage securely. This script and method gives you a way to securely store them on a USB drive in such a way that losing the USB drive does not compromise or lose your keys. Really this can be used for any number of files, but the idea is to secure private keys.
This security is achieved using Daniel Silverstone's incredible libgfshare and secretfs. You can read the details of those projects there. All this script does it make it easier to deal with them.
Firstly, you will need a thumb drive to work with. I recommend using only a small partition for this as your private keys probably aren't that big and then you can put whatever you want on the rest of the drive. Namely, I recommend putting a FAT partition for the majority of the drive and your partition for this after that using whatever filesystem you like. This will prevent Windows from helpfully offering to erase all your files should you plug it in to a Windows machine. This is what my drive looks like:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 58 14845447 7422695 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdc2 14845448 15240575 197564 83 Linux
You will also need to install the aforementioned software packages. I have included them in this repository to make your life easier.
Once you get that all set, I strongly suggest you find a way to automatically and consistently mount the partition to a known spot. I gave the partition a label and udevil liked that just fine. If you want to do it manually that's fine too but you will want to mount it to the same path always.
After you have all that working, just run a make install (probably as root)
and the script will be installed. You will probably want to edit the
configuration file located at /etc/gfk.conf. After you set everything, run
gfk setup to mount secretfs. I recommend you put this in your .bash_profile
to run automatically at login.
The configuration file is sourced from the script so the syntax is the same as setting bash variables. The following variables are defined:
Temporary location when generating shares. This should be a ram disk for best security.
Directory for file shares stored on the USB key. This should usually be on a removable media such as a USB drive.
Directory for file shares stored locally and symlinks to files stored on the USB key. This should not be readable by other users as it will contain sufficient data to reconstruct your files when the USB symlinks are active.
Directory for mounting secretfs. This is where your reconstructed files will appear when they USB symlinks are active. As such, it should not be readable by other users although the default for secretfs is to give the files 0400 permissions.
Directory for storing unused shares. This is the weakest point of the system as it can potentially store enough data to reconstruct the files without any other point of access. As such, it is recommended to use something secure to store these and that the shares are distributed quickly to your other computers.
Running gfk without arguments will give you a basic usage menu. The following
commands exist.
Add the file to the USB drive. This will split the file with gfsplit and move
two of the shares to the USB drive. It will move one share to your local
computer and the rest to the configured storage area. It will then verify that
the file was correctly split and replace the file with a symlink to the copy of
the file in secretfs. If the USB drive files are inaccessible, the secretfs
copy will disappear, rendering the file useless.
Grabs a share from the storage area and copies it to your local filesystem.
This is how you add a file to a second client after using add on the first.
Removes a file from the USB drive and places it in your local filesystem. This
is the inverse of add. If you do this, the file will stay broken on any other
system where it was being used.
Lists all the files available on the USB drive. Note that secretfs doesn't support directories so this is just a flat list. You will have to remember yourself where to put them on your client machines.
Tries to unmount the USB drive. It will use udevil, sudo, and plain old
umount in that order. I strongly encourage you to do this before you pull the
drive out.
Mounts the secretfs system. You must do this before the files will start
appearing magically. I recommend adding this to your .bash_profile or
whatever equivalent thing you have if you don't use bash.
I know that was a lot to read so here's a "TL;DR" version:
[22:25:20 alan@gandalf ~] $ ssh-keygen -t dsa
Generating public/private dsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/alan/.ssh/id_dsa):
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/alan/.ssh/id_dsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/alan/.ssh/id_dsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
36:e9:0b:e8:62:bd:3d:cf:e1:0d:a9:8f:2e:a1:2c:ef [email protected]
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ DSA 1024]----+
| |
| |
| |
| . |
| S |
| .. o o |
| . o... = |
|. =.o..* = |
| =E.o+=+* . |
+-----------------+
[22:25:41 alan@gandalf ~] $ gfk add .ssh/id_dsa
.ssh/id_dsa is now stored on the USB key
Remaining shares are found in /home/alan/Dropbox/gfshare
[22:26:33 alan@gandalf ~] $ gfk eject
USB key unmounted
Later…
[22:37:15 alan@radagast ~] $ gfk grab .ssh/id_dsa
id_dsa shared from USB key to .ssh/id_dsa
[22:39:17 alan@radagast ~] $ ssh-keygen -yf .ssh/id_dsa > .ssh/id_dsa.pub
[22:39:28 alan@radagast ~] $ ssh-keygen -lf .ssh/id_dsa
1024 36:e9:0b:e8:62:bd:3d:cf:e1:0d:a9:8f:2e:a1:2c:ef .ssh/id_dsa.pub (DSA)
For good measure, I keep a copy of this repository on the partition with the keys so that I can get things setup even if I don't have the internet although I'm not sure what good my private keys are without the internet.
I also put a fun image on the FAT partition in case someone finds the drive:
In the future I want to devise a better storage system, perhaps encrypting the unused shares on the USB drive.