this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
29 points (100.0% liked)

Selfhosted

40261 readers
820 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Hi everyone, I found the great question on booting encrypted drives, and since I'm somewhat paranoid I'd like to ask a follow-up:

When the key to decrypt the drive is input into the system, I'm assuming it stays in the RAM till the time the computer shuts downs. We know that one could, in theory, get a dump of the contents of the RAM in such a state, if done correctly. How would you deal with this problem? Is there some way to insert the USB, decrypt the drive, and then remove the USB and all traces of the key from the system?

Thanks!


Edit: link to the question I referenced: https://feddit.de/post/6735667

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I’m assuming it stays in the RAM till the time the computer shuts downs

Correct.

We know that one could, in theory, get a dump of the contents of the RAM in such a state, if done correctly.

An example of such an attack would a "cold boot attack".

Is there some way to insert the USB, decrypt the drive, and then remove the USB and all traces of the key from the system?

It sort of depends on how the underlying hardware is designed. You can create a system in which the RAM's contents are encrypted by the hardware, but at some point the data must be decrypted for use. For example, one could theoretically sniff the data-lines between the RAM, and the CPU. This is all of course ignoring the fact that the hardware, itself, could be compromised i.e. Intel M.E., backdoors/vulnerabilities in the BIOS, etc. There's lots that can be done to try to mitigate security vulnerabilites, but there is always a tradeoff between security, and convenience.

Maybe the best form of security is memorizing a private key, then manually doing the math with a pen and paper to decrypt some text, and transmit it with a carrier pigeon.