Announcing paperbackup.py to backup keys as QR codes on paper

Peter Lebbing peter at digitalbrains.com
Fri Feb 24 11:32:33 CET 2017


On 23/02/17 11:00, Gerd v. Egidy wrote:
> Seems you are trusted by much more people than me ;)

More people trust that that key is mine, they don't trust me as a
person, my actions or my certifications. dkg already answered that bit
:-). These are mostly people I've met at a keysigning party. They have
seen my passport and asserted that "Peter Lebbing" is as far as they can
tell indeed the person in possession of that key. They don't trust me
more than the next guy, because they don't know me personally.

> If we are talking centuries, I'd worry about the availability of gnupg as much 
> as qrcodes.

If there is still software that can work with OpenPGP v4 keys, then you
can restore your private key from your paperkey-style backup. If there
is no more software that can work with OpenPGP v4 keys, what are you
going to do with your restored private key? Frame it and put it on the
wall? ;-)

> Not all decoders are capable of it, and if one qrcode is missing, the linking 
> is broken and you have to patch the decoder to still get some data.

Understood. Good to see you've thought it through.

> I used the largest error correction ratio possible.

Given the size of those QR codes on paper, you could use a camera that
is so elderly it has developed presbyopia and cataract and still scan
them succesfully! :-D

Cheers,

Peter.

-- 
I use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) in combination with Enigmail.
You can send me encrypted mail if you want some privacy.
My key is available at <http://digitalbrains.com/2012/openpgp-key-peter>

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