Simple way to protect your private keys and google auth codes

in #authentication7 years ago (edited)

free-encryption.jpg

I had to figure this out the hard way, but if you decide to use google's authentication for 2 factor authentication and your phone decides to crap-out you might be out of luck. Expect to wait countless hours to verify your identity and get those codes reset by support.

Instead what you can you is store the seed/key for the 2 factor authentication in plain text, and encrypt it with a passphrase. This way, if your phone gets reset you can just go back to your file and restore the 2FA code from the seed.

If you're in linux this is pretty easy...All you have to to is:

  1. Create a file with all the 2FA seed/keys you need.
  2. Encrypt the file with openssl:
    openssl aes-256-cbc -salt -e -a -in keys.txt -out keys.enc
  3. Destroy the original text file: shread -n 10 keys.txt
  4. Decrypt the file openssl aes-256-cbc -d -a -in keys.enc -out keys.enc.txt
    Restore the 2FA codes, and then:
  5. Destroy the text file: shread -n 10 keys.enc.txt
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yes, backup!

It is really helpful to secure your account.

Thank you for this. I am always worried about losing my phone or something happening. I will do this, Great Post! I am going to resteem so all can learn. Thanks again.

is nice thanks

good post

upvoted

Thanks @ethminer45 sharing this type of information. wish you the best

This is very useful!! Thank you for sharing!

Thanks for the helpful info. hopefully you found this out before you built up a large balance. That would suck to lose everything you worked for lol resteem follow and upvote. feel free to do the same! wish you the best!

Great Post... Thanks a lot