veramount - mounting encrypted veracrypt vol with yubikey

goal

This procedure and script is for managing an encrypted veracrypt filesystem with a yubikey NFC 5 device. In this way you can mount and dismount the filesystem only with the yubikey connected in which you previously wrote a GPG key. After setting up, just connect the key and launch the script, you will get immediately your filesystem mounted.

The encrypted filesystem is very important for many purposes: holding bitcoin wallet file, storing very important sensitive data, etc. For example in case you have a bitcoin wallet, it's very important that your wallet file is held into an encrypted filesystem for privacy. It contains infact for example your addresses, your labels, and so on. So it's important even if the wallet is read-only. Always use an encrypted filesystem for storing key informations. Never leave sensitive informations on a filesystem without encryption because your security and privacy is otherwise at risk.

With the strategy here described you can achieve the maximum security because the system is based on an external device and not on a password to keep in mind or written somewhere, which is a unsecure way to do.

What is needed:

Ubuntu whatever flavor, tested on lubuntu 19.04
veracrypt filesystem encryption software
yubikey 5 NFC device
pass
GPG2
simple mount and dismount script provided

Install software on Ubuntu

Install all the software you need, by running the micro-script

./dependencies

Obviously veracrypt software must be also installed. Please refer to: https://www.veracrypt.fr/en/Downloads.html

Generate the GPG key

Generate a new GPG 4096 RSA key to use for credentials encryption

gpg --full-generate-key
gpg --edit-key --expert <your_email@key_identifier>
addkey
#choose (4) RSA (sign only)
#choose 4096
#answer questions
save

Backup your keys

Backup your private key somewhere safe, by running the provided micro-script

./keysbackup

Change the key length on yubikey to 4096

Prepare your yubikey to accept the RSA 4096 private key you just generated with GPG

gpg --card-edit 
admin
key-attr
#change length to 4096 and exit

Move/install the gpg key to yubikey device

Move the key to yubikey device

gpg --edit-key AF6FCExxxxxx
gpg> key 1
gpg> keytocard
gpg> <pick the right slot>
gpg> <repeat for the other keys>
gpg> save

Activate pass software

Configure your pass software in order to use the GPG key (inside yubikey) for passwords encryption. This is a key step

pass init "GPG-ID-HERE"

Now you are ready to store keyfile content into pass

store your keyfile content and password inside pass in location you prefer
configure constants in the script to match pass location you wrote keyfile and password on pass, both on mount and dismount
launch the script and test

NB: It's suggested to set a password and a keyfile content in such a way you have a procedure to recover. For example you can use a words-map like bitcoin BIP39 or some other mechanism like that. Backup should be always on an offline paper.

Contact me

we talk about these topics on this youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/MassimoSMusumeci and also at the telegram group: https://t.me/BitcoinSecPriv . Please refer also to resources published on the website https://www.massmux.com for more infos or contact me massimo (at) denali.swiss or go (at) massmux.com

massmux/veramount