Securely Storing Data Backups on the STEEM Blockchain

lukestokes (75) in encryption • 7 years ago

Today I was updating one of my files where I store invoice information, and I thought about storing an additional backup of the file in case my hard drive crashes. I already use Apple's Time Machine backup feature, but I thought it would be fun to try something a little different as well.

Why not put it on the blockchain?

One thing to consider when backing up a file to the blockchain is it becomes publicly available to everyone. An easy workaround is to encrypt the file first. That brings up an additional concern if the file contains data which needs to remain secure for many, many years. Some encryption mechanisms become obsolete and vulnerable as computational power increases. That means if you put an encrypted file on a blockchain which lasts forever, at some point in the future that file may be deciphered by someone with a strong enough computer (or a quantum approach we haven't yet imagined).

In this case, it's just invoice information, so no big deal.

For those not familiar with GPG (and even those who are, there's always plenty to learn), I found this GPG Tutorial by Digital Ocean has a lot of useful information.

To decrypt my invoices file so I could back it up on the blockchain, I used this command:

gpg -a -o privex_invoices_2018-02-23.asc --symmetric privex_invoices.txt

(Note: I already added cipher-algo AES256 to my ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf to avoid WARNING: message was not integrity protected warnings.)

The -a part is important as that ensures I get text output instead of binary output. It prompts me for a password which I generate with 1Password (my password manager) and store there securely.

If I ever want to decrypt the file, it's as simple as:

gpg -o privex_invoices_decrypted.txt --decrypt privex_invoices_2018-02-23.asc

Here's the contents of privex_invoices_2018-02-23.asc which I'm now storing on the blockchain as a backup:

Now, if I ever lose the original file or accidentally delete it, I can now recover the information using the encrypted data stored forever on the blockchain.

Pretty cool, right?

Online privacy, encryption, reputation, and identity are important topics which have to come out of the "nerd realm" and into every-day society. This stuff really matters because if we begin building a voluntary society using smart contracts without government and their threats of violence for compliance, then all participants will have to require high levels of personal responsibility. For more on that, see Privacy, Identity, and Human Flourishing.

Unfortunately, this stuff is still pretty complicated. Programs like https://keybase.io/ make it a little easier, but the more we trust layers on top of the core encryption tools, the more vulnerabilities can be introduced. There's often a conflict between making things easy and keeping them secure.

I hope this post at least reminds you of the importance of securely backing up your files and exploring tools like GPG to control your own data security.

Luke Stokes is a father, husband, business owner, programmer, STEEM witness, and voluntaryist who wants to help create a world we all want to live in. Visit UnderstandingBlockchainFreedom.com

_{I'm a Witness! Please vote for @lukestokes.mhth}

encryption blockchain backup gpg

7 years ago by lukestokes (75)

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omnicolor (45) · 7 years ago

Interesting concept, but what's to stop everyone from randomly just posting GPG encrypted stuff on here without providing any valuable posts? While that's a useful post to the poster, it wouldn't provide anyone else any value and seems kind of spammy.

Clearly, this particular post did provide value in that you might have taught someone to use GPG, provided another potential value for the blockchain, and started this conversation.

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1 vote

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lukestokes (75) · 7 years ago

Nothing but economic incentives. If I, for example, started posting backups of my files constantly, would I love followers? Would people remove me from their voting bots? For sure. I could also do a decline payout post, which would be fine, but even then, those who automatically vote for me would lose voting strength without any curation rewards. Eventually, I'd lose them in that scenario as well.

That's what I love so much about the STEEM blockchain. There are financial incentives to be a good actor. Instead of just posting this file with a decline payout and no explanation, I turned into an educational piece to help others.

Ideally, spammy behavior not only doesn't get rewarded, but also gets flagged. The problem we have there is many don't want to waste their voting strength to downvote because there's not immediate financial incentive to do so (other than protecting the perception of integrity and value of the whole system).

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2 votes

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felander (71) · 7 years ago

well, you do not need to do it on your main account. you could set up a new account and just use that to post your invoices. That way you do not really "rape" the reward pool and there are no votes to lose. But you are being provided with an eternal free storage method. nobody would notice it, there would be no followers hence also none to lose

This is a solution that could work for a while of course but if everyone and their dog started saving every paper on the blockchain on dummy accounts then this would potentially change the whole purpose of the chain (personally I think its to late for that but it might have been a possibility)

What if? can be a cool question sometimes

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isnochys (66) · 7 years ago

The problem is, how will you retrieve it later?
In a year?
How will you find it?
For that you need to look through all your posts.
Wouldn't it better in a custom json?
That way one can store everything I m the blockchain, use its own index and find it faster later.
Of course, nothing over 64kb.
Otherwise you have to split it

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1 vote

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lukestokes (75) · 7 years ago

Yeah, the size limitation is a problem there, but I do agree that's a great approach. It's not one that simple users can use though. Most people aren't running their own interface to the blockchain other than Steemit. As for finding it later, I could store a link to it in the notes of my password manager where stored the password to decrypt (which is a great idea I'll do right now). Otherwise, I can just search for it.

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1 vote

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isnochys (66) · 7 years ago

Or make one post.
And add everything in comments.
How to store data within steem.. On this topic I made myself some thoughts, since I am here,.. Just never posted them:)

Hmm. Maybe that would be another app for steem?
If I had time I would script something.. Hmmm..

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jayem (45) · 7 years ago (edited)

The backup idea sounds great. But are you not degrading the system and the purpose of this social network by having it back-up files that does no one any good, except for you. Is there a size limit for posts? Is this not something that can be abused and make the system suffer?

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1 vote

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lukestokes (75) · 7 years ago

Many things can be done to abuse the system, for sure. It's designed to enforce bandwidth restrictions so only those who have paid (invested in Steem Power) can use bandwidth and storage appropriately. Some thing to consider is that the STEEM blockchain is not Steemit. That's something many people get confused on. If I just wanted to backup files, I could create a separate account on the STEEM blockchain for that purpose and not use it for social activity at all.

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jayem (45) · 7 years ago

Well I guess we all have a stake into it. To each his own, After a certain amount of time can you delete the file or change it? Or is it frozen forever?

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lukestokes (75) · 7 years ago

Blockchain data is forever. It's immutable. That's why this approach is only really useful for point-in-time backups.

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graphicalx (49) · 7 years ago (edited)

Cool! Or you could send a small transfer to someone and post this file as a memo. Or even a comment to your own post. Have a post called "My backup" which has comments from you containing all your data, and you keep coming back to that post to comment more.

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3 votes

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thedaud (51) · 7 years ago

I am not so good in blockchain yet, Your sayings are worthy. Thanks for educating me about blockchain and data backups.

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1 vote

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blusky (8) · 7 years ago

very good advice.
thanks for sharing with us coz it helps us a lot
@lukestokes

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1 vote

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mahadihasanzim (65) · 7 years ago

very good advice.
thanks for sharing with us coz it helps us a lot.

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1 vote

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rzaman (5) · 7 years ago

That's a amazing post..Keep it up..
Resteemit done...

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wakkylyon (52) · 7 years ago

Woah... Might sound weird, but i've never used explored this function. But now i know. I'll follow your steps and do it right. Thanks @lukestokes

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trendo (58) · 7 years ago

Ahh this is an interesting idea! I think the blockchain could be a great place to store data backups, but I wouldn't put anything too important on it, because it becomes public and who knows, maybe one day it'll get hacked. Obviously, the chances of this happening are probably really really low, but still, the part that it's public wouldn't make me feel very secure about it!

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war-tp (49) · 7 years ago

thanks @lukestokes for his guidance. very useful for us who are still beginners in the world of steemit.

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builderofcastles (64) · 7 years ago

I do not know about using a generated password for this.
As, many of the cases where you would need this file, that password manager would probably be destroyed.

Also, if you wanted to be really secure, right your own compression algorithm. If they know you used PGP, then all they have to do is find the password. If you role your own, they have to find the password and how you encrypted it.

The using a book encoding technique, a word in your file becomes the page, line & word numbers in your encryption is very very strong. It is only broken by repeated usage and more than one person knowing which book.

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omnicolor (45) · 7 years ago

Rolling your own encryption is most likely going to be less secure than using established crypto. The chances of a security expert getting crypto right when designing a new algorithm are pretty slim. Yes, the key to decrypt the data might get found, but the likelihood of that, compared to a developer not being as smart as they think they are is not a tradeoff anyone should take.

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1 vote

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lukestokes (75) · 7 years ago

Well said, sir. :)

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lukestokes (75) · 7 years ago (edited)

"roll your own" is universally one of the worst pieces of advice in the encryption space. If you don't believe me, ask anyone familiar with that space or just look at history.

I'm all for one-time pads, but you're still having to secure the "password" or the key you used. If my password manager was every compromised, then I'd be screwed anyway. Files that don't need to be stored in a password manager because they aren't super important secrets can be encrypted and stored just fine on a blockchain. Again, in this case, there was nothing super secret about the data, other than putting it out there in plaintext would be kind of silly (and meaningless to others).

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1 vote

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builderofcastles (64) · 7 years ago

I can see your point, as I have seen people "encrypt" credit card data by adding an extra number to the end of them. (In a large charity)

However, from my brain type, encryption algorithms are pretty straight forward to me. And how computers implement them is very straight forward to me.

So, maybe my statement is not for anyone other than me, and people I like to talk to.

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snrm (57) · 7 years ago

Pretty cool how you would be able to get it right back so quickly with the backup. Yeah the transparency on Steemit is pretty damn high honestly.

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dedyrendra (58) · 7 years ago

Great information... Nice job @lukestokes

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raisa.marzan (49) · 7 years ago (edited)

wow! so beautiful photography with nice post.

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mcfarhat (70) · 7 years ago

love the idea !!

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vanemilano (47) · 7 years ago

I am new to blockchain and thanks to this article I have learned a lot and it has been very helpful, I still feel that I have a lot to learn but thanks to your post I feel that I will improve a lot! Thanks for your tips

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aqsaali (51) · 7 years ago

Thanks for this information and great concept

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jrb450 (53) · 7 years ago

So did you create a new Steemit account specifically for the purpose of storing documents?

I used Kleopatra to help create encrypted messages to a vendor I was buying edibles and fake id's from off the Silk Road in my bad-boy days.

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lukestokes (75) · 7 years ago

Nah, this was more a proof of concept for me. May some day in the future I might do something like that. Maybe even wrap it up in a command line tool that would use steem python or something similar to store the messages for you on the blockchain.

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scaredycatguide (73) · 7 years ago

Well, even with the risks. Pretty freaking cool man!

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jedau (67) · 7 years ago

You know, I've been thinking about the very same thing the other day. Combining seemingly disconnected technologies is truly the way to move forward. I love how robust blockchains are and coupled with advanced encryption, they could store private information in plain sight. Man, if they could just find a secure way to make us our own private keys, nobody would need to memorize anything anymore. No more identity theft, no more lost passphrases. That would be the dream!

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ashe-oro (64) · 7 years ago

interesting, so you just create a post and add all the GPG data (including body and header)? Do you think there will be a more elegent way to store this one day? Feels like a service to help ppl encrypt and store in to the Steem blockchain without having to create a post would be epic.

How are you inserting the data in to a block?

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lukestokes (75) · 7 years ago

Yeah, it's all there in the signed message. That message can be decrypted to get the original file back. As for a more elegant way, I don't know. Maybe certain tags (I like "test" may work like this?) could be ignored by most interfaces including STEEM? With that, we'd have concerns about vote abuse though (imagine a whale voting up their own hidden crap every day). There's no fancy data insertion, just the text you see in the post.

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ashe-oro (64) · 7 years ago

Regarding the whales, they can alreayd upvote any of their own crap (ie. Bernie Sanders does this). I think self-voting can be an issue, but this doesn't change that dynamic.

Also, I envision a service that generates a private/public key pair for you (similar to how crypto web wallets work) that will then encrypt your data and submit it to the Steem blockchain as a service.

Can someone grab and hide that shiny object for me? I'm going blind...

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stealthtrader (67) · 5 years ago

Is it possible to make this happen using sidechain technology? 🔑🔗🗄🔐

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