this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I have MX Linux setup with LUKS/btrfs and it was asking password on boot, so I put my key in TPM and modified /etc/crypttab to retrieve it, at least I don't have to enter it at any boot, but yeah it decrypts automatically, like Windows Bitlocker in fact, it still asks my user password login (my choice, no auto login here), but at boot you can break grub and have a root shell it you know how.
Other way is to put the luks key on a USB drive, when you leave home with your computer shutdown, take the USB key with you and that's it.
The point of using the TPM is that it does not unlock the drive unless it has a certain set of software is loaded in a certain sequence on the machine with that specific TPM chip.
So if somebody breaks grub and makes it load a shell, then that results in different software loaded (or at least loaded in a different sequence) and will prevent the TPM to unlock the system. The same is true if somebody boots from a rescue disk (different software loaded) or when you try to unlock the disk in an unexpected phase of the boot process (same software but different sequence of things loaded, e.g. after boot up to send the key to some server on thr network. The key is locked to one TPM, so removing the drive and booting it in a different machine also does not work.
The TPM-locked disk is pretty secure, even more so than that USB idea of yours -- if the system you boot into is secure. It basically stops any attacker from bringing extra tools to help them in their attack. All they have available is what your system has installed. Do not use auto-login or run some root shell in some console somewhere...