Horcrux
Security and privacy
secret sharing
SHOW HN2021
How HN took it
4 positive, 6 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 6 critical, out of 17 comments about the project. Thread score -0.03.
Idea: 1 for, 3 againstExecution: 0 for, 3 againstDesign: 2 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Nice UI wrapper and a cool project
From 3 comments
to be fair - this cool, but the heavy lifting part is actually the interesting one
mvolfik on HNThis is a really nice UI wrapper around the @stablelib/tss (https://www.stablelib.com/modules/_tss_tss_.html) library if you fancy building your own.
onion2k on HNOne idea this inspired me with is to create a single html file which contains both the code to assemble a SSS secret (from other HTML files or the base64 encoded secrets). The…
slaymaker1907 on HN
Objections
Implementation is flawed: shares use substitution cipher, enabling frequency analysis
From 1 comment
This implementation is flawed. Each shard gets a unique substitution cipher making this nothing more than a cryptogram generator. Input "aaaaabbbbbcccccdddddeeeee" with any…
Nerdyfro on HN
Shamir secret sharing is often misused and mostly snake oil
From 1 comment
My experience with Shamir Secret Sharing software is that it's mostly snake oil, pushed by snakeoil vendors: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Shamir_Secret_Snakeoil Probably the best…
nullc on HN
Entering a higher number needed causes an unexpected error
From 2 comments
just go to https://francoisbest.com/horcrux and set Number needed to 10. It blows up
m00dy on HNTyping any additional number into the "number needed" field with keyboard on Chrome immediately shows "An unexpected error has occurred."
nanidin on HN
Name Horcrux is a poor fit since Horcruxes are the opposite of threshold sharing
From 2 comments
It's not a great choice though. The idea of horcrux is that any piece is enough which is basically exactly the opposite of what shamir secret does ;) It was a much better choice…
forty on HNExactly (about it being the opposite of an "actual" horcrux). But this is not even the first (or the second) split-secret mechanism to make this same reverse analogy
627467 on HN
Requests
Standard format for shares so they can be recovered without the program
From 1 comment
Is there any kind of standard for this? Every SSS implementation I've seen has its own custom format for the shards, so if you lose the program that reassembles them you can't…
PaulAJ on HN
Explain why some replacement characters in a share still work
From 1 comment
that's really cool, I've been playing w/ Shamir a bit. I noticed I could change the last character of one share and still get back the secret. not every replacement character…
jjazwiecki on HN
Questions
How to store shares on hardware tokens
From 1 comment
On the topic of shamir shares, plugging a question I asked yesterday[1]: how do you manage them if you want to get them onto hardware? Do you just ask your tokens to encrypt the…
fovc on HN
Why some last-character changes in a share still recover the secret
From 2 comments
that's really cool, I've been playing w/ Shamir a bit. I noticed I could change the last character of one share and still get back the secret. not every replacement character…
jjazwiecki on HNBase64 padding, probably.
vlfig on HN
Alternatives named
ssss command line tool
From 1 comment
For "everyday" practical use, there is also a really simple command line utility around called `ssss` which is available in many distro repos[1]. Debian has it since Jessie[2]…
st_goliath on HN
libgfshare
From 2 comments
There is also libgfshare which seems to be the recommend tool.
encryptluks2 on HNSomething cool you can do that I recently found out about is use libgfshare to split a text file using whatever C and T shares you want. Then use scrypt on the split shares with…
encryptluks2 on HN
Ian Coleman's Shamir tool
From 1 comment
Ian Coleman made one of these a few years back which is also great: https://iancoleman.io/shamir/
rkagerer on HN
Polychain Labs horcrux CLI
From 1 comment
Polychain Labs open sourced a Shamir's secret sharing CLI tool by the same name 2 years ago. https://github.com/polychainlabs/horcrux
lrvick on HN