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Current account recovery best practices? (infosec.pub)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi all,

Need to pick your brains for a bit regarding best practices for handling of account recovery issues while traveling.

Premise would be that my phone gets lost or stolen, and I may not have easy access to my laptop either, and being in a foreign country I couldn't easily get a copy of the original SIM to restore via OTP.

Consequently, I also don't really love the idea of using some password manager with a master password and no F2A.

Under those circumstances, what would you consider the best way forward to ensure accessibility without crippling myself in the process?

The only thing I can come up with is a random subdomain on one of my domains, with random username and random password, where I store an encrypted container containing txt-files. Maybe even further obscured with a random cypher (all numbers / letters shifted x positions to the right or something).

But there's gotta be other use-cases out there, so I was wondering what you are using?

Ideally something that doesn't involve another person.

Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

That's the problem.

We're discussing accessing your accounts without prior access to a pre-authorized device.

If you don't have a device that's already signed into your email, you can't get into your passwords at all. Email is locked with a password stored in your password db, your password db is locked with your email. Without one or the other signed in already, you've locked yourself out of your own accounts.

[–] youngGoku 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Keepass db doesn't use email 2fa, its just a file you store on your device

I store it on all my devices so if I lose one I still have several others.

I use nextcloud to keep them syncd but you can use any cloud (google drive, icloud, one drive, Dropbox, etc)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's still gaining access through a device that's already signed in/has your password db.

If you do not have access to a device that's already signed into your accounts/has a copy of your password db; how do get in?

Presumably you're smart enough to not have password only auth on a public facing nextcloud instance if it stores your password db...

This is the scenario we are discussing. The fact you store you db on other devices is entirely irrelevant.

[–] youngGoku 1 points 10 months ago

My nextcloud instance uses fail2ban and I use a >32bit strong password.

Assuming I lose my phone and my laptop and my personal computer and my nextcloud instance I would be screwed.

Since I host my own mailserver I would be able to create a new mailserver with a new password though and recover any accounts with a new email.