Musings about on-disk encryption in Fedora Core

[Russell Coker]

On Tue, 6 Jul 2004 17:08, Nils Philippsen <nphilipp at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-07-06 at 02:18, Russell Coker wrote:
> > For a really secure system you have to boot from removable or read-only
> > media.
> >
> > If an attacker can compromise the kernel image that you boot from then
> > they can own you.  If you have an unencrypted kernel/initrd stored on the
> > hard disk then you must either keep the hard disk locked up at all times
> > (in which case encrypting it doesn't gain much) or treat every unexpected
> > reboot as a potential compromise.
>
> I was concentrating mainly on means to secure data (against prying eyes,
> not corruption), securing a system is a completely different kind of
> thing.

Securing the system is exactly the same thing IMHO.

If your system is insecure then encryption won't help, the attacker will get 
all your passwords and happily decrypt all your data!

> And I know that for my data to be really secure against an 
> attacker, my kernel must be secure, too. But let's reach for the
> lower-hanging branches first, okay? ;-)

I agree.  Encrypted swap is the lowest branch IMHO.

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