Key safety vs Backup

[vedaal at hush.com]

>Message: 7
>Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:27:48 +1300 (NZDT)
>From: Atom Smasher <atom at smasher.org>
>Subject: Re: Key safety vs Backup : History of a bad day
>	(key-restoration	problem)


>>> even with a reasonably strong pass-phrase i wouldn't want to 
>walk 
>>> around with my secret key on a flash-drive with my physical 
>keys, but 
>>> hidden in a JPG of family/friends/pets it would be easily 
>overlooked if 
>>> i lost possession of the flash-drive.

>i'll agree that it's somewhat irrational, but it does give me a 
>warm fuzzy 
>feeling that my 2048/4096 bit secret keys are not only encrypted 
>with a 
>reasonably strong pass-phrase, but also stored on an encrypted 
>file system 
>and not publicly available, and all backup copies are also double 
>encrypted.
>
>regarding my faith in AES, just check out the preferences on my 
>public 
>key.
*****************************************


so why not keep your keys in a hidden true-crypt container on a 
flashdrive

with usb flashdrives becoming less and less expensive,
a 4gb flashdrive, with a 2gb truecrypt volume, and a 200 mb hidden 
volume,
there should be more than enough space for keyrings, secrets, 
backups, etc.
and you don't need to use aes, if you have some dislike for it
(i don't,
and personally,
my truecrypt containers use the triple encryption option of
rijndael-twofish-serpent)

the only difficulty i have with truecrypt, is opening a windows 
generated truecrypt fat-32 volume on a linux system
(i use xp-pro and ubuntu)
but i think that's just my inexperience with ubuntu and truecrypt 

vedaal