Musings about on-disk encryption in Fedora Core

[Nils Philippsen]

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. 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? ;-)

Nils
-- 
     Nils Philippsen    /    Red Hat    /    nphilipp at redhat.com
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."     -- B. Franklin, 1759
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