Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 13:51:05 -0400 From: "Thomas R. Stromberg" <tstromberg@rtci.com> To: Robert Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org>, freebsd-security@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Status of FreeBSD security work? Audit, regression and crypto swap? Message-ID: <39788D89.56359DCA@rtci.com> References: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1000719165025.73365A-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Robert Watson wrote: > Personally, my big fear is my notebook computer. I can encrypt data on it > using command line tools, but I'd much rather see a device layer that I > can use to protect both swap and sensitive partitions. Swap could use a > randomized key, and mounting of data partitions could rely on a > user-provided key for the device layer. A crypto-fs might be more fun, > but if we have the facility to layer device access, we might as well use > that for a quicky solution. It's easy for someone to walk off with > personal computing devices -- in the office, at home, at the airport, ... > > Robert N M Watson At work we've had great success using cfs (cryptographic filesystem) for sensitive data. As a "oops I forgot" or "oops the sysadmin is dead" precaution, we store all root, router, and sql passwords on a relatively unmarked disk. This of course is held in a secure area, in a fireproof box, and the password is only passed via word of mouth. Due to the complexity of getting cfs setup for a junior admin, we've scripted it all out with a cute ansified menu in perl. This automated script also keeps on-disk diffs of all changes, a log of all activities, and syslogs out upon insertion. This of course just weeds out novices who get their hands on the disk. There are three great advantages to using cfs on floppies: 1) Idle timeouts and time limits. If someone idles on the disk for 10 minutes, cfs can unmount itself. This is a godsend feature. 2) If you put it in a Windows box, it appears unformatted. Great for wannabe hackers and managers alike. They have to know its UFS. 3) Forces the user to be on a machine that he has root on, and that can mount cfs. Aka, it forces us to deploy FreeBSD boxes on the desktop. Ive also messed around with storing my home directory in cfs, until I forgot its password :( Of course, there is nothing stopping anyone from using pgp for important documents, but this can get unwieldly. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.2 (FreeBSD) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE5eI0noyBzPESpFVQRAu3ZAJ9dHsCV8ysBbpXQvZFwNzvMQyRbzQCffdnN Kj0KfA+OIG9mVtKWDLohT8k= =llJA -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- thomas r. stromberg : tstromberg@rtci.com senior systems administrator : http://www.afterthought.org/ research triangle commerce, inc. : 1.919.657.1317 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message
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