From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 7 Aug 2001 13:22:16 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 7 Aug 2001 13:22:06 -0400 Received: from acmey.gatech.edu ([130.207.165.23]:2223 "EHLO acmey.gatech.edu") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Tue, 7 Aug 2001 13:21:54 -0400 Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.2.20010807125043.00a864a0@pop.prism.gatech.edu> X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Tue, 07 Aug 2001 13:30:14 -0400 To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: David Maynor Subject: Encrypted Swap Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org The recovery of deleted information is a large danger, esp to certain government agencies and other people who really care that the information the have is never seen, but implementing such features in the kernel seems the wrong place to do it. In addition to the swap space, in order to be effective, you would need to keep the memory in an encrypted state, as well as your disk. Just encrypting your swap would be akin to ssh to a machine, telneting to another machine, then sshing to a 3rd machine. Since your transfer between machine one and two is in the clear, you entire security model at that point is comprised. Just encrypting your swap leaves the info vulnerable in other places. My suggestion is instead of worrying about the swap space, or the tmp space, worry about an entire OS security posture(eg. filesystem, memory, boot). So if a machine is stolen or comprised, there is an onion of security protecting you, not just one or two things. David Maynor