On the road again: Encryption

Kaj Haulrich kaj.haulrich at adslhome.dk
Wed Feb 22 20:16:55 UTC 2012


On 02/22/2012 07:45 PM, Christopher A. Lindsey wrote:
> Hello to list!
>
> Well, I've been trapped behind a desk for awhile and am now going back
> on the road.
>
> I'm planning to take my laptop running Ubuntu 11.10.
>
> I've been reading and reading about the available options for encrypting
> my system and many of the articles/posts are very instructive.  However,
> many of them seem very much out of date and even contradicting.
>
> My laptop will contain company information, client information and
> personal information.  It's critical that this data not fall into
> unscrupulous hands due to loss or theft.
>
> I would like to fully encrypt the system to ensure no data can  be
> salvaged.  Especially, client information.
>
> I'd like to use TrueCrypt as I'm some what familiar with it.  However,
> with the new full disk encryption available for Ubuntu I though  it
> would be a good idea to ask if anyone has any thoughts on which would be
> a better option.
>
>  From what I've been reading, it appears I'd have to do a fresh install
> to use either one.
>
> Anybody have any thoughts?

Well, I run my /home partition encrypted with the built-in encryption 
tool. It runs absolutely fine, and from what I have read, it should be 
impossible to crack without a supercomputer running for years. It does 
require a fresh install and formatting - including the swap partition.

I don't know if it's mandatory to partition your disk, but it certainly 
will not harm. Why encrypt the whole disk? - If you keep everything 
within your /home it seems like overkill to me...

Speaking of overkill: you could furthermore secure your *really* 
sensible date - like passwords - in an extra encrypted directory. For 
example with ccrypt. Just compress it with tar.gz end then run ccencrypt 
on it. It uses the Rijndael cipher, which is the U.S. government's 
chosen candidate for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

Regards
Kaj Haulrich.
-- 
--- Sent from a 100% Microsoft-free computer---
--------- Running Linux Kubuntu 12.04 ---------




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