Peter_22@xxxxxx wrote:
As "test disk" is able to restore overwritten/shredded (dev/urandom) or erased (dev/zero) partitions, how secure is encrypted root as aespipe reads data from one partition, pipes it through aes and writes it back to the same partition?
well, data recovery/shredding has been discussed *very* often on various lists, in the end the best thing you can do is to shred the storage-medium itsself (and eat it afterwards ;-))
but you're asking:
In case you can restore a shredded partition with such a tool, what can you do with data encrypted by aespipe???
well, *hopefully nothing* nothing can be done with AES-encrypted data (if you're not in posession of the key of course). that's the point of encryption, right?
This has nothing to do with watermark or code attacks. It´s just the fear that someone could recover all data in a state *before* it was piped through aespipe.
yes, the leftover plaintext has to be overwritten of course. but as said before: to besure, just (aes)pipe the encrypted data to a fresh disk, then destroy the disk with the plaintext...
Is this a real problem or just neglectable?
as always: "it depends". think of the expense to - just wipe the plaintext partition - destroy the disk - eat the disk-shreds ;-) - spot the parking car next to your lab with the TEMPEST device on board to get the passphrase from your keyboard and if it's worth the data you're going to secure. CK. -- BOFH excuse #73: Daemons did it - Linux-crypto: cryptography in and on the Linux system Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-crypto/
