That means this whole scheme is about as secure as a locally stored
passphrase, i.e. not secure at all. The only benefit a remotely
stored passphrase has, is that if you take down the remote server
_before_ the local machine is compromised and when the local volume
is _not_ decrypted, you can deny the unlock. If the local machine
is compromised while the remote server is running, or while the
encrypted volume is mounted, the attacker gets everything. If
the local machine is not compromised, you do not even need encryption
to be secure.
With that, I have the impression that the security model of this
is fundamentally broken on a conceptual level.
if you have one static host that gets keys from one static server,then the passwordless ssh method seem obvious but its pointlessness will shortly be realized.To access the key from a different host machine,the private key must be sent to the different host and the server,through other means,must be informed of the new host and hence it seem pointless since the private key could instead be used as a passphrase to unlock the volume or to unlock a key protected keyfile.
There is another reason why such a setup could be useful and that is convenience from centralization of keys.
I dont manage my luks keys individually,i have them in kwallet and access them through it.I have a bunch of luks volumes and i dont need to remember their individual keys as all i need is the key to unlock kwallet.
His use case could be the same,only he want to access a wallet that is not on a local machine,but on a remote one so that he could smoothly switch between devices he own and have access to his volumes keys through a single key.
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