Murphyan strategy summarized

How to make sure your 157 GB of unseen pictures and videos, the book you wrote and never published, or the credentials to access your home banking don’t get lost forever? Spending only 5 minutes and no money! Or spending €29,99 and 5 minutes… All this with NSA grade security!!!!
Here is the explanation in six simple steps…

One

In your personal computer install KeyPass or some other reliable Password Manager.

Two

Create a strong Master Password using content taken out of a book in your home or office.

Three

Populate your Password Manager file with your personal passwords and PINs.

Four

Copy the Password Manager file to a pen drive, or a cloud folder (Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive...).

Five

Setup a My Proof of Life account.
It takes less than 5 minutes.

Six

In the My Proof of Life app compose your message sharing the access information.

Managing passwords and PINs

How to lock all critical information in one encrypted container

A proven strategy to manage passwords, PINs and other sensitive information is to use a password manager application.
There are paid, free and open source solutions, in the cloud or local, that guarantee the best possible usability based on powerful military grade encryption.

Here at mdss most of us use KeyPass. This application is open-source, free and available in any platform, (Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android...).

Check these two articles that include detailed comparison data on the leading solutions:
PC Magazine and Life Hacker.

facebook login

Creating a master password

A Master Password is the key to all the encrypted information

Your password manager, where all your passwords and PINs are stored, needs a strong password to lock your information safely.

  • Select a book at home. For example The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that unique report on the performance of your portfolio last year, or some cooking book in the kitchen.
  • Select a phrase from the book. Chose a phrase that you relate to and memorize easily. Also, chose one that you can type fairly easily and fast.
    (e.g. the phrase “in England who drives 4-horse passenger-coaches” is a 166 bits password that would take 10,000+ centuries to crack using brute force in a home computer)
  • Take note of the page and line where the phrase can be found.
    (e.g. page 14, first line, first 8 words, using a number, with spaces)
book shelf

Low tech, High Security

Strategy to implement a Security Triangle

This strategy includes physical access to private locations, knowledge of personal information and access to the messages stored in Proof of Life.

  1. A physical storage device to keep the encrypted password manager file
  2. A physical object that holds the password to access the encrypted password manager file
  3. The hint to where and how the password can be found and used, and instructions on where is the device containing the encrypted information

List of all the items needed to put in place this strategy:

usb connection


Most Important! The message

The key to the whole triangle is the message that provides the lead or hint to the physical record of the Master Password to your Password Manager.

So, the message is needed to get access to the physical record of your Master Password to the Password Manager that has the access codes to your devices (smartphone, laptop, home PC…) and username/password/PIN protected information (bank cards, accounts, cloud drives, subscriptions…).

An aditional powerful security layer, can be put in place simply by masking the content of your message behind only privately known information.
For instance, instead of saying in the message to someone familiar with your home “the Tom Sawyer book in the den”, this information can become cryptic just by saying “my favorite story from childhood, stored where Tommy used to lay to soak up the sun”. (Tommy, is the cat dead in 2003).