Plain vanilla HMAC-SHA1 uses a shared secret. I don't want the PC/server to have a copy of the credential. May also be susceptible to MITM/relay attacks.
Wider support than OpenPGP. More HST vendors to choose from, including cheaper options than NitroKey or Yubikey: useful if each sysadmin (or colleague, or relative) needs an HST.
Thank you for this! That thread is helpful in itself, and also links to other relevant resources - including by Lennart Poettering (controversial guy, but the canonical source on systemd).
their setup required a couple large antennas that the victim would need to stand in between. Not impossible, but you'd notice with each side being half a meter away.
So yes, it's a technical risk, but not one that I'd bother putting much effort into avoiding. And the being able to use the key via NFC is probably worth the risk.
This was my conclusion, too, but I didn't want to prejudice the discussion. Thanks for corroborating.
IMO, using a Faraday pouch isn't "much effort", and is therefore worth doing if the HST is being carried in unfamiliar/non-secure locations.
i believe a much better secure layer is something similar to what Novacustoms, Purism attempt to do: verify if somebody else not you try to access the laptop.
You're thinking of Heads, which I agree is ideal for supported motherboards.
Home server containing family files: scans, photos, device backups, ...
Office server containing business files: sensitive documents, device backups, ...
Web or email server containing websites, Fediverse instances, emails, etc
In all those cases, full disk encryption (FDE) is a sensible precaution to protect the data in case the server is physically stolen.
Linux is probably the most common OS kernel for self-hosting. On Linux, LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) is probably the best FDE system. It's mature and reliable. But anyone self-hosting a Linux server with LUKS FDE is faced with the question of where to store the keys.
Hardware security tokens (HSTs) are widely considered a safer place for keys than SSDs, HDDs, or USB storage. They follow the smartcard principle: a private key can be written to an HST but not read from it (security vulnerabilities excepted). Instead, they implement cryptographic algorithms to prove possession of the private key. So, anyone self-hosting a Linux server with LUKS FDE should strongly consider storing their private key(s) on an HST.
However, there is more than one way to do that. Hence the question in my OP.
Technical point: that isn't exhaustively true. Terrorism can be, and sometimes is, committed against vulnerable parties by more privileged ones.