OSEC

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From: Angelos D. Keromytis (angeloscis.upenn.edu)
Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 20:06:07 CDT

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    In message <20010605004833.978B07B84berkshire.research.att.com>, "Steven M. Be
    llovin" writes:
    >
    >If you really want encrypted swap, and you want it with little effort,
    >use CFS and swap to a file. I ported CFS to NetBSD; you can find it
    >at your choice of

    There are three problems with this:
    a) performance (although I suspect this won't be *that* bad)
    b) usability: you'd have to have someone actually login and type a
       passphrase before you can start swapping -- not always an option;
       you could cmkdir and cattach with random keys at boot time of
       course, but that goes back to your earlier point of having enough
       entropy when you boot
    c) deadlock: if the system ever needs to page out cfsd....

    An easier/quicker hack is adding encryption to vnd's (Niels also did
    that in OpenBSD, I recall the diff was about 200 lines long).

    The best solution of course is to have real encrypting block devices,
    but I think the discussion was about quick hacks.
    -Angelos