[Gllug] Editors

[home at alexhudson.com]

On Sun, Jul 29, 2001 at 05:41:23PM +0100, David Freeman wrote:
> > Why? I don't see it makes any sense at all, actually ;)
> 
> Oh it does, a small amount of parania is healthy. I beleive Phil
> Zimmerman has alot to say on the wide spread use of crytography.

I don't see that security == paranoia. I see paranoia as being more the use
of time for ventures entirely unnecessary. Perhaps just my interpretation..

> I am paranoid mainly as I take my machine to a number of LUG meets where
> at times it is left unattended. As such I would not like someone able to
> gothrough my disk drive.

That's not necessarily paranoia - if you have data which is sensitive to
you, personal, then there's no reason why that should be accessible to
others.

> Or limit the number of possible times that the plain text is stored.
> Given enough memory it is possible for the data to not be stored in VM.

The data goes in VM _however_ much RAM you have I'm afraid (virtual memory
is more than just swap space!! :). But I don't think that's what you mean ;)

> Can Swap space be turned on and off? 

swapoff [part]

Not recommended though. 

> Does anyone know how I can force the kernel to not use VM for certain
> applications? (I have 384MB RAM)

Not for applications AFAIK - but it is certainly possible for an application
to state that pages should be locked in RAM.
  
> I have to type a password everytime I boot. Having to type in my pass
> phrase every time I boot is an acceptible price to pay. Security is not
> a comprimise.

Security is always a compromise. 

> RIP act! That is why it is needed. The plausable deniabilty aspect of
> the StegFS is the main selling point.

You either misunderstand stegfs or you misunderstand the RIP act. To gain
access to the StegFS partition, you need a passphrase. StegFS gives you no
plausible deniability about that - only the data _on_ the partition. They
can still ask you for your passphrase, and you can't deny you know it.

The RIP act isn't concerned with encryption per se, only the methods of
circumventing it :(

> Having an encrypted filesystem is fine except that you must give the key
> or accept 2yrs in prison!

.. and StegFS exempts you from this precisely how?

Cheers,

Alex.

-- 

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug