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SeedQuest: A 3D Mnemonic Game for Key Recovery

Background

Human memory is often incapable of remembering long strings of random characters like those found in a cryptographic key. Often a mnemonic, a technique used to aid in memory retention, is used to improve the recall of complex information. SeedQuest is a 3D mnemonic game used for key recovery. It is designed to be simple and fun, and it only requires a few minutes to complete. In a virtual 3D game world, the player visits a number of locations and performs various actions in a specific order. This order is generated to encode a player supplied 128-bit seed for a one-time pad that encodes a cryptographic key. After rehearsing the generated quest (the series of actions performed at the different locations in the game), the seed can be recovered at any time by playing the game and completing the rehearsed actions in the correct sequence. A stored encoded cryptographic key can then be decoded using the recovered one-time pad seed. As a simple and effective method for key recovery, this mnemonic could be a useful feature for any cryptographic system where the user is required to generate and manage private keys.

At each action spot, the player will have a choice of different actions to take.

A journey through this world to take four actions at four different sites will be reasonable for a human to remember, and provide enough shards of entropy to be combined into a 128-bit string used for a seed to create a one-time pad.

The world built for seed quest would include 256 map areas, with 4 sites (buildings) in each area, with 8 action spots in each site (building), with 8 possible actions at each site.

The number of sites per area and the number of action spots per site could be variable as long as there are a total of 32 action spots per map area.

256 areas = 2^8 bits of entropy, 32 action spots per area = 2^5 bits of entropy, 8 items per spot = 2^3 bits of entropy, with 4 actions per item = 2^2 bits of entropy.

With a visual world to explore, the mnemonic load of remembering a seed is significantly reduced.

As long as someone can remember four actions at four locations, the seed can be recovered at any time by playing the game.