As I asked support, it seems that if your recovery key ever get compromised, you will NOT be able to reset/rotate it as it happens in Proton for example.
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How-To rotate the Proton key? Change password?
@Kris Just revoke/update recovery phrase.
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tbf, the master secrets are only ever supposed to be exposed to or used in HSM / SE / Enclaves etc.
Un-rotatable secrets (master & recovery) aren’t that big a deal as long as these are not exposed / exported / exfiltrated to regular environments.
This is mentioned in Ente’s security audit,[1][2][3] so it isn’t something unknown… Some here do have a different expert opinion:
All that said, every system will have limitations (or “flaws” as you put it), even the ones that let you rotate keys, or protect keys from exfiltration:
I mean, even standards-compliant cryptography is full of assumptions & limitations (… or flaws). There wouldn’t be talk of post-quantum security otherwise.
“The observation was made that the user’s masterKey and collectionKeys do not rotate when a user updates their ente password.” ↩︎
“Retention of the same encryption keys - even after a password change in the ente application - represents a significant security vulnerability.” ↩︎
“The persistence of unchanged encryption keys may inadvertently expose users to persistent security risks, even after they have taken corrective measures to update their passwords. As a result, the ente team should prioritize resolving this vulnerability by implementing a robust key management system that includes securely updating encryption keys upon password alteration.” ↩︎
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Not sure I agree it is a security flaw indeed. But surely it would be better if you could change the key. It is however your encryption key to all your data, so fairly likely that this is also a technical limitation. If you would have the abiliy all your data would have to be reencrypted and thus reuploaded. Which isn’t far of creating a new account with in and export.
But perhaps indeed if Ente wants to update their crypto they will add support for this as they will need to re-encrypt data anyway. You see that Proton also has not offered this feature actually for migrating to PQC. The recovery key might not give account access but I wonder how it will prevent you from decrypting as I am not seeing them renecrypting your data? If you have more details on that i would be keen.
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I suppose maybe that the recovery key of ente is holding the decryption secret were at proton it is an additonal password that can decrypt the actual secret? This is just me guessing. Would need to look into the whitepapers.