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- Have your cake and eat it too!
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You know how it is. You've heard of it happening. The Man comes
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and takes away your servers, your friends' servers, the servers of
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You know how it is. You’ve heard of it happening. The Man comes
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and takes away your servers, your friends’ servers, the servers of
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everybody in the same hosting facility. The servers of their
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neighbors, and their neighbors' friends. The servers of people who
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owe them money. And like *that*, they're gone. And you doubt
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you'll ever see them again.
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neighbors, and their neighbors’ friends. The servers of people who
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owe them money. And like *that*, they’re gone. And you doubt
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you’ll ever see them again.
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That is why your servers have encrypted root file systems. However,
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there's a downside. There's no going around it: rebooting is a
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there’s a downside. There’s no going around it: rebooting is a
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pain. Dragging out that rarely-used keyboard and screen and
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unraveling cables behind your servers to plug them in to type in
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that password is messy, especially if you have many servers. There
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have to be on hand and manually type in the password at boot time.
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Otherwise the server just sits there, waiting for a password.
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Wouldn't it be great if you could have the security of encrypted
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Wouldn’t it be great if you could have the security of encrypted
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root file systems and still have servers that could boot up
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automatically if there was a short power outage while you were
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asleep? That you could reboot at will, without having someone run
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not likely. If someone does that, the whole system *will* lock
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itself up completely, since Mandos servers are no longer running.
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For sophisticated attackers who *could* do such a thing, *and* had
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physical access to the server for enough time, it would be simpler
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to get a key for an encrypted file system by using hardware memory
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scanners and reading it right off the memory bus.
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For sophisticated attackers who *could* do the clever thing, *and*
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had physical access to the server for enough time, it would be
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simpler to get a key for an encrypted file system by using hardware
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memory scanners and reading it right off the memory bus.
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Nope, the network stuff is all done over TLS, which provides
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just as well open your servers and read the file system keys right
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off the memory by running wires to the memory bus.
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What this system is designed to protect against is *not* such
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determined, focused, and competent attacks, but against the early
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morning knock on your door and the sudden absence of all the servers
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in your server room. Which it does nicely.
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What Mandos is designed to protect against is *not* such determined,
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focused, and competent attacks, but against the early morning knock
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on your door and the sudden absence of all the servers in your
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server room. Which it does nicely.
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Copyright (C) 2008 Teddy Hogeborn
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This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or
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modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
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published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
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License, or (at your option) any later version.
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This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
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WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
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MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
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General Public License for more details.
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You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
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along with this program. If not, see
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<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.