Are there any encrypted filesystems that work on the Nokia tablets ?
With all the buzz about people losing laptops with reams of HR records
etc. it seems having an encrypted FS on an eminently losable device such
as a tablet would be a good idea. While gpg can be used to encrypt single
files, it is a real pain if you have lots of temporary files like a
browser cache, and you have to remember to clean up plaintext with "shred
-u".
I've used BestCrypt on my Linux desktop and laptops for the last few
years. At the time it seemed the only thing that worked, and I've kept
going out of inertia, but it's nonfree on Windows and uses x86
precompiled kernel modules ("taints the kernel").
How it works is that you create an encrypted container file (or a raw
device), then create a filesystem on it (ext2, VFAT, etc.) and mount it.
You give a password to mount the container, after which you have a
normal-looking filesystem which can contain things like
.mozilla/xyzdefault/cache and /tmp. I guess you could put /home on it,
but earlier versions were insufficiently robust to risk it.
(For the paranoid, there was recent buzz about people pulling data such
as disk encryption keys out of RAM by cooling it, power-cycling then
booting an alternate low-footprint OS - e.g. if someone steals your
laptop when it's suspended or on)
--
Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada
Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376 (Pacific Time)
Network Security Manager
