I understand that overwriting the device with random data before setting up loop-aes on the device is needed in order to prevent an attacker determining how full the encrypted filesystem is.
I realize that good encryption schemes operate on a "the less information discernible to an attacker, the better" principle. But, in reality, how useful is knowing how much data is in the filesystem to an attacker? It says nothing about the data itself? And if files are put in the filesystem and deleted, or moved around, then gradually - with fragmentation and such - even this information gets lost eventually, doesn't it?
Can an attacker discern the size of individual files if the device has not been overwritten first?
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Linux-crypto: cryptography in and on the Linux system
Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-crypto/
