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Loading the LUKS header from an external source?

dm-crypt Michael Enßlin 3 participants 3 messages Mar 14, 2014 1 message not in the archive

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#1 lore raw

Hi,

is there a way of loading the LUKS header from an external file, so that the first sector of the hard disk will actually be the first sector of the encrypted partition, and the whole disk will look like pure random data?

If those features are currently not available, plain dm-crypt seems preferrable mainly for plausible deniability reasons. Please consider this a feature request.

Michael

#2 lore raw
Quoted 8 lines · Michael Enßlin

Hi,

is there a way of loading the LUKS header from an external file, so that the first sector of the hard disk will actually be the first sector of the encrypted partition, and the whole disk will look like pure random data?

yes,look at "--header" option in cryptsetup's documentation.

From the terminal,type "man cryptsetup" and then look for "--header" entry in the "OPTIONS" section.

#3 lore raw
Quoted 4 lines · .. ink ..

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 10:03 AM, Michael Enßlin <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

Hi,

Quoted 8 lines

is there a way of loading the LUKS header from an external file, so that the first sector of the hard disk will actually be the first sector of the encrypted partition, and the whole disk will look like pure random data?

yes,look at "--header" option in cryptsetup's documentation.

From the terminal,type "man cryptsetup" and then look for "--header" entry in the "OPTIONS" section.

Exactly and using external header also allows to set data offset to start of the disk, exactly what you want.

All is also described in release notes for 1.4 http://code.google.com/p/cryptsetup/wiki/Cryptsetup140

Milan