quoting
naddr1qq…kta5SUBJECTIVE ENCRYPTION: HOW I SAVED MY STACK.
This is an article about how you can encrypt a seedphrase in such a way that you can safely carry it with you on your phone, keep it in a notebook, upload it to a cloud or even hang it on your livingroom wall, yet it will be as hidden as invisible.
In the film Constantine starring Keanu Reeves, an exclusive club for seers run by Papa Midnite enforces a strict entrance policy to keep ordinary people out. At the door a bouncer holds up a card with surreal depictions on both sides. If the guest is able to describe the image on the hidden side of the card, access is granted, as proof of vision beyond eyesight has been given.
Similarly, we can create a card where by just looking at it, we can inequivocally derive its hidden message. It would kind of look like a word puzzle, a puzzle that you can solve with your own memory.
Bitcoiners often say that you can carry your entire networth in your head across borders. While technically true, no one would actually trust his entire fortune to his own short term memory, because the mind works in such a way, that which you want to remember, you always forget, and that which you want to forget, you will always remember.
Here is where long term memory comes in the picture. There are certain memories that will stay with you for the rest of your life. Even old people that become cenile, end up recurringly talking about those memories from the early days. It is that resilient. So resilient memories allows to create what i call subjective bridges.
A subjective bridge is a piece of information that relates to a subjective experience, more specifically deeply engrained memories. This is information from your past that you and very few people have knowledge of. Nicknames are perfect examples. These «bridges» will lead us to a decryption «key» which in turn will lead us to «the secret» or the sensitive information valuable to us.
Bridge ———> Key ———> Secret.
So let’s look at it with an example. Let’s say I need to encrypt the word DENIAL from the BIP39 word list. Let’s also assume i have a brother named DANIEL. Now i have never called Daniel by his name, to us in the family he was CURLY. Ever since we were little, that’s the only way i refered to him, because of his hair.
CURLY is my subjective bridge, which will lead only me and a few others to the word DANIEL, the key. Now i can use the letters from DANIEL and rearrange them to form the word DENIAL, the secret.
Now, since no two words in the BIP39 word list share the same 4 first letters, i actually only need to point to the first 4 letters of DENIAL.
In this example, for simplicity purposes, all letters needed to form the secret were contained in the key. But actually, when encrypting 12 or 24 words, you can actually grab letters from any word that is well hidden behind the bridge. So Curly’s middle name, mom and dad’s name, car, pet, address, spouse, etc. It only needs to be a well established memory.
So while CURLY leads me to DANIEL, to a stranger it reveals absolutely nothing.
The card will look something like this:
1.A. First letter of Curly’s real name. 1.B. Fifth letter of Curly’s real name.
1.C. Third letter of Curly’s real name. 1.D. Fourth letter of Curly’s real name.
This technique will allow you to keep your seedphrase encrypted just about anywhere. It does not even look like a seedphrase, just a word puzzle. It will also allow someone very dear to you (often a brother or a sister) to decrypt your seedphrase in case something happens to you.
When i found out about the coldcard hack, me and my sister were oceans away from our coldcards, but our encrypted seedphrases were in my email, her email and also my proton drive. So in a matter of 15 minutes, we were able to recover our wallets.
INTRICACIES:
When encrypting your seedphrase, make a list of all the words that you can reliably associate with a certain bridge (hint). Again, it has to be information that you will never ever forget. Once you have a substantial amount of words, cross out every letter that you make reference to. Never use the same letter twice in the puzzle, that will tell an attacker that two words share the same letter in a specific position.
If the bridges you use are known to your sister, brother or spouse, it is good practice to once a year go over all the bridges and make sure they lead you all to the same key.
woodwork on Nostr: Hey Calle (street in spanish, which is pretty cool, and also slang for "homie" in ...
Hey Calle (street in spanish, which is pretty cool, and also slang for "homie" in Venezuela). You think this idea I articulated has any value?
