Shipping/Cloning encrypted disks

Hello,

I was thinking about a project which basically involves linux images with full disk encryption. The images should be shipped to or downloaded by multiple users. Since the end users are likely linux novices the setup should be as easy as possible. At the moment I see two options.

1.: Filesystem image with non-encrypted boot and encrypted main filesystem.
     The image should be dd'ed to a hdd or usb drive and resized to fill the whole drive. Then the master key will be changed with cryptsetup-reencrypt.

2.: Like 1 but the filesystem has also a non-encrypted main filesystem.
Encryption will be done either as described here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dm-crypt/Device_encryption#Encrypt_an_unencrypted_filesystem or with this tool : https://johannes-bauer.com/linux/luksipc

Currently I am strongly in favor of option 1 since it forces the end user to use full disk encryption. With option 2 it could just be skipped. Also the required effort seems to be the same for both options. Is there anything else to consider for option 1? Is changing the master key enough? Best practices/build options for the encrypted filesystem?
Maybe an option 3 ... ?

Vasili

You also need to change the passphrase(s) with option
1. or anybody with access to the default passhprase can get in.

In principle, full-disk encryption is not more secure against a competent attacker than data-partition only encryption. The attack just takes a bit more effort for FDE, like manipulating the kernel image or the initrd. Of course, if logs or the like are confidental, they need to go into the encrypted part.

Regards,
Arno

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That's going to take at least 3 times as long as it needs to. The cryptsetup-reencrypt operation is slow. Because it's reading and writing the same disk, it takes about 2X the time it took to copy the original image.

Format the LUKS destination container, then open the source and destination containers and "dd" from one to the other. You've already got a new master key and whatever passphrase you chose at the destination. You can resize the filesystem after you've done the copying.

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