Linux Laptop - Securing Personal Data from Thieves

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by NGRhodes, Oct 14, 2010.

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  1. NGRhodes

    NGRhodes Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jun 23, 2003
    Posts:
    2,381
    Location:
    West Yorkshire, UK
    I currently use the encrypted home features of Ubuntu - is that enough ?

    Do I need to worry about my root partition (I have a separate home partition that ONLY holds my own user home) not been secured ?

    Would be interested in what people know/do.

    Cheers, Nick
     
  2. Mrkvonic

    Mrkvonic Linux Systems Expert

    Joined:
    May 9, 2005
    Posts:
    10,215
    My policy is to encrypt any portable storage thingie, meaning any device that is not a desktop computer. All external disks are encrypted, unless they contain meaningless info like movies or test virtual machines and such. Personal data resides in encrypted containers.

    In my Linux distros, I do not encrypt the home dir, but I use encrypted containers where I keep the data. No need to encrypt anything else really, as the rest of it contains non-personal stuff.

    If you use special services, some of which may keep cleartext passwords in partitions like /etc or /var, make sure you use something other than your special passwords.

    Mrk
     
  3. chronomatic

    chronomatic Registered Member

    Joined:
    Apr 9, 2009
    Posts:
    1,343
    I encrypt my entire drive for peace of mind (everything except /boot). This way there is no "leakage" of any important data.
     
  4. katio

    katio Guest

    Depends on your setup but it should be enough for typical Desktop usage, the only thing is I'd move tmp to RAM (tmpfs) and check if swap is encrypted (should be by default when you choose the encrypted home in ubuntu).
     
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