Horcruxes are similar to what emmanueloga_ has mentioned. Horcruxes were special things in which Harry Potter's lead antagonist, Voldemort stored parts of his 'soul', so that even if he died, someone cpuld revive him using the horcruxes. I haven't kept up with Harry Potter for a year now, so I might be wrong with respect to the exact definition.
> A horcrux is a plot device where the protagonists need 2fa to send a HUP or TERM to the misbehaving process.
Okay, I didn't literally LOL, but you did earn a really big grin and even a chortle. Well done.
BTW, I would totally read "Harry Potter and the Protocols of Security". Some of the "Methods of Rationality" fan fiction by Eliezer Yudkowsky nods in that direction (eg. the Death Eaters' opsec).
I think so, particularly if you've read Rowling's books and were annoyed by many of the protagonists and supporting characters for a variety of reasons.
If nothing else, "Methods" succeeds in giving agency to more characters, including the villains (not necessarily to their, or Harry's, benefit), and explores/tests the "system" of magic in more depth.
I think these concepts are significantly different - as different as salts and peppers at least. Peppering helps protect against database access revealing password. Horcrux protects against password manager access. Peppering is stored on the server, but outside the database. Horcruxes are stored in the user's head. You could do both, one, or neither. Client-side peppering would be having part of your password outside of the password manager but still on your computer. If anything it's brain-side peppering.
> Peppering helps protect against database access revealing password. Horcrux protects against password manager access.
What is a password manager but a database of your passwords? Peppering is a token that is not in the database of passwords that needs to be applied for the password to be correct. Whether it's applied by an application, or a person doesn't seem relevant, as what is an application but a set of instructions a person could do carried out automatically?
I don't care what it's called, but I don't really see a difference in the scenarios you've outlined.
> Peppering is a token that is not in the database of passwords that needs to be applied for the password to be correct.
Well, typically a server only cares about verifying the user (still) knows a password.
A typical server (today) does not have a way to reconstruct the plain password, only a way to check if any given string matches.
A password manager, typically does have a way to supply the password.
Peppers and salts are typically manipulated by the server system, plain passwords are typically managed by the password manager.
In this case the password manager never sees the hocrux, and cannot leak it. A server will typically leak a pepper to anyone with access to ram (or access to a hw enclave, which is expected to be more difficult).
Frankly this has more in common with a 2FA approach with one factor being the password manager and the other your horcrux. I wouldn't call my phone authenticator app a client-side pepper.