What are the benefits of full disk encryption compared to a solution where the a /boot partition with the kernel remains unencrypted?
As far as I understand, the benefit of having a full disk encryption is to prevent a malicious actor to inject bad code on the kernel (for example that code could reveal the encryption password making the encryption useless).
Otherwise, having a full disk encryption complicates the set-up as the boot loader should know how to open an encrypted partition and the initramfs should contain the key to work on the root partition.
In a full disk encryption environment there is also the need for a method that prevent arbitrary modifications on the boot loader, if not the additional security over unencrypted kernel is lost.
Some argues that similar benefits of FDE are in any case obtainable with a bootloader that check the hash of a kernel before let the control to it.
Do you think that -from a home set-up prospective (not in a high security scenario)- there are some points about FDE that I missed?
What is the most balanced configuration for a typical home laptop that balance simplicity and security (for the typical risk having your machine lost/stolen)?
That’s wrong. Full disk encryption starts early when system boots. Since then it works transparently for all users. That is, if a malicious actor penetrates working system, then nothing prevents malicious code injection or stealing of personal data.
Disk encryption can protect system and/or user data only in case of theft or unauthorized access to (powered off) computer.
Ah yes, that’s for sure. I mean that if you leave your computer (powered off) unattended a malicius actor could currupt your booting process. BTW, I don’t think this is a typical threat for a domestic pc.
One other use case, @ugnvs: If you are disposing of a computer (trash, donate to school, etc.) FDE protects you. In those cases you should format the disk, using an overwrite option, before disposing of the device, but that won’t necessarily erase data from spare sectors, bad sectors that have been swapped out of the file system, or sectors that have been logically deallocated for wear-leveling on an SSD. In those cases, having only encrypted data in your sectors from day one means the (supposedly) inaccessible data is unrecoverable.
Other than make the data unretrivable also make the device useless
Some skilled people could anyway retrive some datas
Encryption is a wise trick to delete the information: just burn the the encryption key and it’s done. This is very useful for swap data as you cannot practically phisical erase your partition/file on every boot.
By the way, to stay more on topic, the discussion is about the benefit of the full disk encryption over the simple encryption of the home/root partion; not the benefits of encryption in itself.
I’d rather not use software based encryption on home devices. The risks of ending up with a completely undecipherable disk due to a minor error outweight the gains by far in my opinion.
However, if one chooses to use full disk encryption, use hardware encryption which is often already embedded in SSDs nowadays. It only needs to be enabled. In my opinion it is less errorprone than software encryption.
Again, for home use I think that encryption is a bit overkill.
It is in my opinion often a better choice to keep personal info on an offline external disk instead of encrypting.
With shattered platters exposed to the elements ? Nah, I don’t think so.
Anyway, the ATA Secure Erase feature mentioned in my earlier post is really something to consider if you want to wipe your drive. On SSDs it is wiped in a matter of seconds.
