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Years ago, before computer era, when trying to protect information in secret, it was necessary to use some physical devices. Like: storing documents behind padlocks, creating tools like cipher disk to transmit data securely, or even using Enigma machines.

Nowadays, when talking about information security, we usually think about cryptography and different algorithms. It is a lot of math running as computer programs. So everything looks like just a sequence of bits to encrypt, decrypt, authenticate…

Actually, there’re still pretty many physical devices used for information security. It’s easy to mention different kinds of tokens, like RFID, USB (Yubico) or OTP tokens.

But recently, there’re coming new security devices. Like noise generators, that are using physical world as source of entropy for random number generators. Or even very low-end thing like Dicekeys.

I found myself wishing to have such kind of phisical security devices. Not only because it’s possible to use them as intended. But also to describe security to others using real world things.