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Editor’s Note: This is a guest blog post by Anthony J. Martinez republished with his permission. You can view the original blog post here.

With the arrival of my second Librem Key, I thought now would be a good time to go over how I use Qubes OS features along with some more products from Purism for various signing, encryption, and authentication tasks.

The Landscape

Here are the various components at play:

• 1x Librem 14 running Qubes OS. My Primary PC.
• 1x Vault disposable qube – an ephemeral network-isolated VM where the second Librem Key will have its subkeys loaded.
• 1x Librem Vault – a gold-colored multi-plug (USB-C, MicroUSB, and USB Type-A) 32GB USB3 drive. This holds an encrypted backup of my GPG Keys and some sensitive documents.
• 2x Librem Key – a USB security token. These hold my GPG Subkeys, with the primary fob also set with the HOTP secret used for PureBoot on my laptop.

The base of all but one of my qubes is Fedora.

Getting Started

The new Librem Key needs to have its PIN set, and since my Qubes OS configuration uses a USB qube it will be necessary to give my running disposable VM access to the key itself:

In dom0, where my target vm is disp4632 and my BACKEND:DEVID is sys-usb:2-1:

$ qvm-usb attach disp4632 sys-usb:2-1

In the disposable VM run:

[user@disp4632 ~]$ gpg --card-status
Reader ...........: Purism, SPC Librem Key (000000000000000000009BB1) 00 00
Application ID ...: D276000124010303000500009BB10000
Application type .: OpenPGP
Version ..........: 3.3
Manufacturer .....: ZeitControl
Serial number ....: 00009BB1
Name of cardholder: [not set]
Language prefs ...: de
Salutation .......: 
URL of public key : [not set]
Login data .......: [not set]
Signature PIN ....: forced
Key attributes ...: rsa2048 rsa2048 rsa2048
Max. PIN lengths .: 64 64 64
PIN retry counter : 3 0 3
Signature counter : 0
KDF setting ......: off
Signature key ....: [none]
Encryption key....: [none]
Authentication key: [none]
General key info..: [none]

Change the PINs

1. gpg --card-edit in the disposable VM
2. admin at the gpg/card> prompt
3. passwd at the gpg/card> prompt
4. Select 1 and follow the prompts, where the first PIN is the default: 123456
5. Select 3 and follow the prompts, where the first Admin PIN is the default: 12345678
6. Select q and quit.

Initialize the New Librem Key

Remove the new Librem Key

In dom0 run:

qvm-usb detach disp4632 sys-usb:2-1

Insert the original Librem Key

In dom0 run:

# Assuming you plugged the original key into the same port
qvm-usb attach disp4632 sys-usb:2-1

Insert and mount the Librem Vault

In dom0 find the appropriate block device, and attach it to the disposable VM:

qvm-block list
...

qvm-block attach disp4632 sys-usb:sdb1

In the disposable VM find the attached disk (likely /dev/xvdi)

[user@disp4632 ~]$ lsblk
NAME    MAJ:MIN RM  SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
--- SNIP ---
xvdi    202:128  1 28.9G  0 disk

Then mount the disk:

[user@disp4632 ~]$ udisksctl mount -b /dev/xvdi
Mounted /dev/xvdi at /mnt/removable

Note that I did not sudo mount /dev/xvdi /mnt/removable as the operation does not require root, and we do not use powers we do not need do we?!

Extract the encrypted backup from the Librem Vault

[user@disp4632 ~]$ cp /mnt/removable/gpg-backup/backup* .

Unmount and Remove the Librem Vault

[user@disp4632 ~]$ udisksctl unmount -b /dev/xvdi
Unmounted /dev/xvdi.

In dom0:

qvm-block detach disp4632 sys-usb:sdb1

Decrypt the backup

This assumes you have installed opensc and have pkcs15-tool and pkcs11 drivers.

First, find the Key ID for encryption key on your existing Librem Key:

[user@disp4632 ~]$ pkcs15-tool -D
Using reader with a card: Purism, SPC Librem Key (000000000000000000009BB4) 00 00
PKCS#15 Card [OpenPGP card]:
        Version        : 0
        Serial number  : 000500009bb4
        Manufacturer ID: ZeitControl
        Language       : de
        Flags          : PRN generation, EID compliant

// SNIP

Private RSA Key [Encryption key]
        Object Flags   : [0x03], private, modifiable
        Usage          : [0x22], decrypt, unwrap
        Access Flags   : [0x1D], sensitive, alwaysSensitive, neverExtract, local
        Algo_refs      : 0
        ModLength      : 4096
        Key ref        : 1 (0x01)
        Native         : yes
        Auth ID        : 02
        ID             : 02 <-- THIS ID
        MD:guid        : ee23dccc-fc38-2dc2-3bc8-bb5f859168d4

// SNIP

Now use it to decrypt the pbkdf2 key used to encrypt the GPG backup tarball itself. This hybrid encryption scheme allows securely storing data of arbitrary sizes and using pbkdf2 with randomly generated secrets and then encrypting those secrets with the Librem Key’s encryption key.

Decrypting the pbkdf2 password file with the Librem Key:

[user@disp4632 ~]$ openssl rsautl -engine pkcs11 -keyform e -decrypt -inkey 02 -in backup.key.enc -out backup.key
engine "pkcs11" set.
Enter PKCS#11 token PIN for OpenPGP card (User PIN):

Decrypting the GPG backup with the pbkdf2 password file:

[user@disp4632 ~]$ openssl enc -chacha20 -pbkdf2 -pass file:backup.key -d -in backup.tar.gz.enc -out backup.tar.gz

Extract the backup

tar xf backup.tar.gz

Verify the keyring is intact

[user@disp4632 ~]$ gpg -k
/home/user/.gnupg/pubring.kbx
-----------------------------
pub   rsa4096 2021-05-08 [C]
      FCBF31FDB34C8555027AD1AF0AD2E8529F5D85E1
uid           [ultimate] Anthony J. Martinez <@ajmartinez:txrx.staart.one>
sub   rsa4096 2021-05-08 [S]
sub   rsa4096 2021-05-08 [E]
sub   rsa4096 2021-05-08 [A]

Remove the original Librem Key

In dom0:

qvm-usb detach disp4632 sys-usb:2-1

Insert the new Librem Key again

In dom0:

qvm-usb attach disp4632 sys-usb:2-1

Export the signing, encryption, and authentication subkeys to the Librem Key

Edit the key in expert mode:

[user@disp4632 ~]$ gpg --expert --edit-key FCBF31FDB34C8555027AD1AF0AD2E8529F5D85E1

In the gpg> prompt select each subkey and use the keytocard command.

Example, using the signing key (key 1):

gpg> key 1

sec  rsa4096/0AD2E8529F5D85E1
     created: 2021-05-08  expires: never       usage: C   
     trust: ultimate      validity: ultimate
ssb* rsa4096/A2206FDD769DBCFC <-- NOTICE THE * HERE - this key is selected
     created: 2021-05-08  expires: never       usage: S   
ssb  rsa4096/6BE6910237B3B233
     created: 2021-05-08  expires: never       usage: E   
ssb  rsa4096/FD94BDD7BED5E262
     created: 2021-05-08  expires: never       usage: A   
[ultimate] (1). Anthony J. Martinez <anthony@ajmartinez.com>
[ultimate] (2)  Anthony J. Martinez <@ajmartinez:txrx.staart.one>

gpg> keytocard
gpg> key 1 <-- this is to deselect key 1

Repeat the above for key 2 and 3.

Verify the card status

[user@disp4632 ~]$ gpg --card-edit

Reader ...........: Purism, SPC Librem Key (000000000000000000009BB1) 00 00
Application ID ...: D276000124010303000500009BB10000
Application type .: OpenPGP
Version ..........: 3.3
Manufacturer .....: ZeitControl
Serial number ....: 00009BB1
Name of cardholder: [not set]
Language prefs ...: de
Salutation .......: 
URL of public key : [not set]
Login data .......: [not set]
Signature PIN ....: forced
Key attributes ...: rsa4096 rsa4096 rsa4096
Max. PIN lengths .: 64 64 64
PIN retry counter : 3 0 3
Signature counter : 0
KDF setting ......: off
Signature key ....: C9ED 41D4 EB62 80BB E61F  0E59 A220 6FDD 769D BCFC
      created ....: 2021-05-08 11:43:52
Encryption key....: 335D C8BC E4A6 8FFF B9B5  CBEF 6BE6 9102 37B3 B233
      created ....: 2021-05-08 11:44:54
Authentication key: D157 68B9 CCCF 4FB5 6FC2  971E FD94 BDD7 BED5 E262
      created ....: 2021-05-08 11:45:39

Cleanup

From here the new Librem Key is configured, and the disposable VM is of no further use. Since disposable VMs are destroyed when the application they were created to run is stopped, the only cleanup necessary is to close the terminal to the disposable VM.

Additional Notes

On my system, I also have vault and personal-gpg qubes. These are both network-isolated and function much the same way the physical key does. The personal-gpg qube holds the very same subkeys as both Librem Keys, and through the use of Split GPG allows for a smartcard-like use of the qube from my other qubes. In a later post, I will detail how I use QubesRPC in personal-gpg to also serve as my ssh-agent for using the authentication subkey in things like my admin qube to prevent me from needing dozens of copies of my SSH private keys everywhere. The vault qube is home to the master secret key, and as such never has any data fed in to it.

The process used to decrypt data can be reversed to encrypt data as well. I will leave that as an exercise for the reader, but the short version is that instead of the decrypt option(s) for the openssl tools use their encrypt counterparts. If you wish to generate a random secret to use with pbkdf2 the following should do the trick:

openssl rand -base64 -out secret.key 32