[ltp] Hard disk password & linux

[James Knott]

Vijay Garla wrote:
> Hello David,
> 
> In 50 years, I hope to be alive - by then i'll just be a little outside 
> of the average life span, and I do exercise, eat well, and so forth, so 
> I'm pretty optimistic.  But, 50 years is long enough for all my 
> bank/brokerage account numbers (and passwords) to change, and for that 
> matter, for the statue of limitations to expire for most crimes ... the 
> problem with any software based encryption as you point out, is that 
> keys land in swap, and if the machine crashes, or is suspendend to disk, 
> keys land in swap as well.

I recently installed encryption software (Softguard) on several 
computers.  With this software, the password is entered before the OS is 
booted, which means the keys do not "land in swap".

Incidentally, there were a couple of articles recently, in the Linux 
Journal, about encrypting file systems.