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by ycombinatrix 98 days ago
FYI your decryption key can be MITMed during this process by anyone with physical access to the system, which defeats the purpose of encrypting the disk in the first place.

Just use dm-verity for remote servers.

3 comments

Security isn't a binary boolean though.
Police show up and arrest you. Could be with reason, could be by accident. Maybe you did something wrong, maybe you didn’t. They also physically size your servers, and in doing so they unplug the system.

If you have disk encryption, your data now requires the police to force you to produce a password, which may or may not be within their powers, depending on the jurisdiction.

It’s strictly better to have full disk encryption and remote unlocking than no disk encryption at all, because it prevents such „system was switched off by accident“ attacks.

>and in doing so they unplug the system.

They have kits that allow them to unplug the server from the wall without interrupting power supply, specifically so they don't lose the decryption keys.

Sure, but in reality I'm more interested in not letting any low paid tech dude in the DC access to my data just because it can pull a drive. Or someone who buys the server from the provider.
More reason to use encrypted memory like with AMD TSME and a deadman switch.
Except they are more sophisticated than this in the real world. They have kits to clone drives and keep power running without interrupting it
In the real real world, not all police has that or uses it in every raid. We got visited once as a group of people some ten years ago, coordinated to happen at the same time at different locations across multiple states, and at none of the locations they brought any such equipment or expert, even though both the accused crime revolved around computing and warrant specifically was for computer equipment. They asked nicely for passphrases and since we didn’t provide any they got nowhere. They even allowed us to power down some machines for them, haha.
If only everyone shared the same use case :)

Maybe I have a server at home, with a locked cabinet and vibration sensors, that houses a server or two and they all use full disk encryption, but I still want to be able to reboot them without having to connect a physical keyboard to them. So no one has physical access, not even me, but I still want to be able to reboot them.

Or countless of other scenarios where it could be useful to be able to remotely unlock FDE.

That's not a counter-argument. You are protecting the physical access, and your threat model doesn't include someone willing to bypass your locks and sensors. (or it does and you just didn't go into those details.)

The argument was that physical access gives up the FDE key.