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From: Rich <rich@example.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Memorizing a 128 bit / 256 bit hex key
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2024 20:04:14 -0000 (UTC)
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Stefan Claas <pollux@tilde.club> wrote:
> Rich wrote:
> 
>> Stefan Claas <pollux@tilde.club> wrote:
> 
>> > Well, I guess this would then need a program to handle, right?
>> 
>> Yes, but you also need a program to handle the conversion from dates to 
>> hex and back.  Granted, few would suspect that the "date" command was 
>> used to convert the dates back into a 'key'.
> 
> And in case people are looking at bash's history, for to many date
> usages, I have a 'del' command in my .bashrc. :-)
> 
> alias del=">~/.bash_history;history -cw;"

Yes, you would want to clear the history, or configure bash to not save 
those specific invocations in the first place.

>> > My Idea is to use no program for that, so that no evidence can be 
>> > found on the device, in case someone is looking at it.
>> 
>> It could be a generic erasure coding program, and the exact parameters 
>> (block size, amount of redundancy, etc.) are remembered and specified 
>> only when it is run to 'check' the output.  Then it would, presumably, 
>> be no more suspicious than the 'date' command itself (other than what 
>> suspicion might be raised by the fact that most OS'es don't ship with 
>> an erasure coder by default).
> 
> I guess, instead of an erasure program, I will only use date and put
> the output in my argon2id program, for key generation, which also has
> the option to overwrite the clipboard.

Which means you /do/ have another program available, that could be 
'looked for'....