Unfortunately, full-disk encryption absolutely kills SSD performance because it makes the data look random (i.e. incompressible). It will wear out the SSD much faster than using it without would, because the hardware compression unit in the controller can sometimes achieve 8:1, and therefore have to rewrite only 1/8th of the NAND cells that it otherwise would.
New Year's Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
121–130 of 187 posts
Re: New Year's Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
#122Unfortunately, the amount of time I spend running/breaking the development version of Ubuntu prohibits full disk encryption, but I do have /home encrypted. Is that "good enough"?
It's not reliable. Think /tmp (deleted temp file data can be recovered), hibernate/swap, log files, and so on. And OS can be more easily tampered with undetected (rootkits/keyloggers etc).
Considering my habit of re-installing the entire OS every few weeks (I tinker a lot with no safety nets), I think I'm ok. I agree that for anyone else though, it isn't enough.
Re: New Year's Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
#123I wonder if there would be significant environmental implications if everyone switched to full disk encryption... Does this impose a significant processor load and does that translate to greater power consumption?
An idling CPU and a slightly loaded CPU use about the same amount of energy. I think my Q6600 quad used 190W @ idle and running full tilt cpu (ray tracing) it was using 220W. For FDE it depends on how much IO you are doing. I doubt it will make even a 0.01 difference in your daily power consumption.
I don't think so. On my laptop, fully loading the CPU takes it from silent to screaming fans in about two minutes. That's clearly a big change in heat production and therefore power consumption.
Re: New Year's Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Human trafficking is the new drugs. Apparently it's enormously more profitable to import sex workers and keep them in a kind of narcotic/whatever assisted slavery, because of the reuse of the person vs. the consuming nature of the drug.
We're getting way off topic but I'd be interested to see a source for that claim. I imagine that the costs associated with a prostitute (food, shelter) would be significantly higher than those associated with a stock of inert crystalline powder, pills, or resin. Even if nominally borne by the prostitute, those greater costs still reduce the profitability of the overall enterprise.
I read a scholarly article on the subject that I unfortunately can't find at the moment but I recall that plausible deniability was one of the big advantages of that enterprise.
Re: New Year's Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
#125Can anyone comment on the speed/performance of TrueCrypt, EncFS, and similar on older systems, e.g. a 5 - 7 year old laptop? I'm considering carrying a "sacrificial" machine in case it is, um, "indefinitely detained", but I'm uncertain what kind of a performance hit full disk (or partition -- though I'm inclined to encrypt the entire disk) encryption will incur. (I currently have Core Duo and P4 candidates for the jo…
Truecrypt has a simple benchmark that you can try (and I think it has a portable installation option so you don't even have to install it on the system to try it out).
My core duo 1.6 GHz laptop gets about 60 MB/s of AES encryption/decryption speeds on battery (which I think reduces the clock to 1 GHz).
I consider the impact negligible.
However if you have an SSD in your system and do full-disk-encryption you will loose potential TRIM-support which can have a significant performance penalty depending on drive.
Re: New Year's Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm willing to risk that since I rarely use any of my swap.
You can and should encrypt your partition, since your home key might end up there. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedFilesystems If you want hibernate to work you can use uswsusp for example: https://we.riseup.net/debian/encrypted-swap Sleep always works, but as mentioned above, your key will be in memory...
Interesting.... I think i'll stick with user directory encryption, but thanks for those links.
Re: New Year's Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's nothing stopping you using FDE on an SSD...
FDE on a SSD negates the gained speed advantage
I ran some benchmarks and 4K read speed really takes a hit with FDE:
2xWestern Digital blue label RAID 0 : 0,65Mb/s (for refrence)
Crucial M4 without FDE : 19,07 Mb/s
Crucial M4 with FDE : 5,59 Mb/s
however the benchmark shows that a SSD is still substantially faster than a classical RAID 0 array
Re: New Year's Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
#128I did this over a year ago and am very happy. I use TrueCrypt. I have not noticed any slow downs (even for gaming)... That said, you should probably not do this if your drives are failing (or you tend to suffer a lot of disk failures).
Re: New Year's Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
#129What about on my mobile? I am not aware (as I havent looked) of any encryption available to the data on my iPhone, or MyTouch 4G. Further, I use Gmail - I have zero expectation of privacy from google. I also store all my important docs for work and personal on DropBox. What will I gain from encrypting my laptop? aside from it being stolen/lost - I dont see any added security/benefit from doing this. I am not trying t…
Android ICS and Honeycomb allows for your data to be encrypted.
Don't use gmail and don't use dropbox for unencrypted files ;)
But seriously, the risk of your laptop being stolen or lost is a huge incentive for encrypting it. I feel much better knowing that the worst that could happen with my laptop is that i loose it (stolen/lost/dropped). I wouldn't wan't to be uncertain whether anyone had access to my personal files if it got lost and the data I have on it is more valuable than the hardware (and I'm still a student...).
For anyone that is tech savvy I see no reason not to do FDE.
Okay, two exceptions. Loosing TRIM support on SSD-drives and travelling to/from countries that feel they have the right to inspect the content of my laptop and that might frown upon the fact that it is encrypted.
Re: New Year's Resolution: Full Disk Encryption on Every Computer You Own
#130I'm not an expert on security, but I do know a bit about human nature. I'd suggest a 2-level encryption scheme. Perhaps FDE and a BIOS password as level 1, and then a futher encrypted area of your HD as level 2. Why? Because this allows you to appear to be cooperating with any request to look at your computer. Simply type in the level 1 stuff and demonstrate the system booting up. I bet 9 times out of 10 whoever is c…
Once you boot up and log in couldn't they see your whole system.