[ale] Filesystem encryption

[warlord at MIT.EDU (Derek Atkins)]

"Michael H. Warfield" <mhw at WittsEnd.com> writes:

> If it's a Linux system, it's a very high probability that it's LUKS
> (Linux Unified Key System).  A number of distros, including Fedora and
> Redhat, support LUKS encryption at install time.  Installing a system
> and then converting it to an encrypted file system (of ANY TYPE) is a
> monumental PITA that I would find it hard to believe that you've run
> into it by chance.  Both crypto-loop and aes-loop suffer from this and

Actually, PGP Whole Disk Encryption for Linux can take an existing
unencrypted system and encrypt the whole disk (including /boot and /) in
place.  So it's certainly possible to convert an existing disk.  However
it might not be possible to convert it to a LUKS-based system.

But yes, it does require you to authenticate the disk at boot time,
either with a password or with a USB token.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available