5 ms·

Why in the world do they ship unencrypted drives around? Drive encryption is pretty standard these days, isn't it?

by jnwatson 5y ago

atonse 5y ago
With the big cloud provides its a trivial checkbox. Can anyone speak to the effort in doing it at the OS level?
- tpxl 5y ago
  There's a checkbox to encrypt the disks when installing some linux distros.
  - jsiepkes 5y ago
    > There's a checkbox to encrypt the disks when installing some linux distros. While I'm not going to defend moving around unencrypted disks it is not as simple as that. The difficult part is not the encryption. The difficult part is the key management of the encryption. You need to solve issue like ensuring you don't lose access to the keys (and thereby access to the data), securely providing keys to people and machines that need access, dealing with key revocation when people leave the company, etc. Though I guess in this case using a simple (long enough) passphrase instead of some form of keys could have saved them from this particular threat.
    - atonse 5y ago
      I thought any of these providers always encrypted with their own key whether you encrypted on top of that or not. But I guess not. Yet another reason to just stick with the big providers. They seem to have pretty serious compliance needs and encrypt no matter what. (Yet you should still encrypt your assets, but I believe they all encrypt their volumes anyway and have pretty strict policies on how to dispose this kind of hardware)
    - rkeene2 5y ago
      When I ran a cloud provider, we used a hardware security module on storage systems which had public/private key pair which could be used to decrypt the header on the disk which contained a copy of the symmetric cipher key. Each header had the symmetric cipher key encrypted with multiple different public keys, including a fallback whose private key only existed in on paper in a vault. Each system could reach out to other storage systems to ask them to use their private key to decrypt the header (for example if their hardware security module had failed), but in some configurations this would require an operator to intervene to enter in passphrase to unlock the hardware security module to authorize the action. This means that: 1. The symmetric cipher key could always be recovered, even from paper backup 2. Having physical access to a disk or any set of disks did not allow you to read the data 3. Having physical access to a disk and a hardware security module did not allow you to read the disk (unless you knew the passphrase, which was always present, and user set) 4. Having physical access to disks, servers, and hardware security module may not allow you to read the data (in the more secure configuration where passphrases were not cached on disk -- but this meant that rebooting required an operator to manually enter the password at boot) 5. The set of valid public keys could be changed frequently (this was indeed automated and only the set of currently active hardware security modules could decrypt the current disk header) Of course you could always short circuit this by making a copy of the symmetric key when you did have access (e.g., `dmsetup table --showkeys`) but without putting some more hardware in the fast/hot path that was unavoidable. The symmetric key could not easily be changed, without rewriting the entire disk (though since it was a storage system designed to accommodate multiple failures, this wasn't that hard, but we didn't do it automatically) The hardware security modules we used were FIPS 140-2 validated and physically connected to the racks (though it would be possible to cut them away). It would also be possible to spy on the APDUs sent to the modules to capture the decrypted data, since there was not mutual authentication (it was in the works though).
      - jtchang 5y ago
        Is there anything on the consumer level like this?
        rkeene2 5y ago
- jnwatson 5y ago
  It is trivial in the Ubuntu installer.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    It's not trivial when it comes to a server. Sure, you can tick that checkbox you'll enable encryption, but when you reboot you realize that you can't actually SSH in it, as it's waiting for a key to be entered on the physical console. Entering (and managing) that key is the hard part.
    - jcynix 5y ago
      That's what Dropbear is supposed to do, it can be included in the initramfs of a server: https://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html https://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html Disclaimer: I still didn't try it myself yet, but it's on my (too long) list of things to do.
      - gnufx 5y ago
        [I don't think it has to be dropbear specifically.] https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Remote_LUKS_Unlocking https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Remote_LUKS_Unlocking has a recipe also including Tor. You still have to be present to unlock the system, unlike with Mandos -- which I wish I'd been able to set up for our office, even before the Great Work From Home.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
madaxe_again 5y ago
They say they’re iso27001 compliant and certified. If they aren’t encrypting in transit, it’s hard to see how they actually can be.
- unilynx 5y ago
  Are you sure they're actually saying that? A lot of hosting providers actually say that their data centers are ISO 27001 compliant, but that doesn't make the provider itself compliant (and it seems scaleway is still doing that too on https://www.scaleway.com/en/datacenter/ https://www.scaleway.com/en/datacenter/)
  - madaxe_again 5y ago
    Well, that’s ridiculous - an asset cannot be compliant - an organisation, and their processes and controls are what are meant to be compliant. If just their data centres are compliant, I guess there’s nothing to stop their staff or contractors just stealing data, as they have here - as compliance purely around physical security for a data centre is 100% meaningless if you’re just ignoring cryptographic controls and human security controls. I’m guessing their certification body isn’t themselves certified. Actually, the fact that they neither say who their certifying body is nor include a link to their certificate, suggests to me that they are lying - which is far more common than you would think.
    - unilynx 5y ago
      I assume they don't mean to refer to the physical building, but to the organisation responsible for the building and its physical security. Anyway that's a thing for auditors to have fun with (so you say you're hosting provider is certified, can you show me their certificate?) as you're not supposed to lean on their website information anyway. I don't think many of the competitors in this space (eg Linode and DigitalOocean) own their datacenters either. As Linode put it: Linode as an entity is not ISO27001 and we rely on the data centers we colocate with to obtain and maintain these certifications Or DigitalOcean in 2017: Our FRA1 facility is ISO9001:2008, ISO27001:2005, and ISO22301:2012 certified. (DigitalOcean later got their own certification)

Why in the world do they ship unencrypted drives around? Drive encryption is pretty standard these days, isn't it?

atonse 5y ago

With the big cloud provides its a trivial checkbox. Can anyone speak to the effort in doing it at the OS level?

tpxl 5y ago
There's a checkbox to encrypt the disks when installing some linux distros.
- jsiepkes 5y ago
  > There's a checkbox to encrypt the disks when installing some linux distros. While I'm not going to defend moving around unencrypted disks it is not as simple as that. The difficult part is not the encryption. The difficult part is the key management of the encryption. You need to solve issue like ensuring you don't lose access to the keys (and thereby access to the data), securely providing keys to people and machines that need access, dealing with key revocation when people leave the company, etc. Though I guess in this case using a simple (long enough) passphrase instead of some form of keys could have saved them from this particular threat.
  - atonse 5y ago
    I thought any of these providers always encrypted with their own key whether you encrypted on top of that or not. But I guess not. Yet another reason to just stick with the big providers. They seem to have pretty serious compliance needs and encrypt no matter what. (Yet you should still encrypt your assets, but I believe they all encrypt their volumes anyway and have pretty strict policies on how to dispose this kind of hardware)
  - rkeene2 5y ago
    When I ran a cloud provider, we used a hardware security module on storage systems which had public/private key pair which could be used to decrypt the header on the disk which contained a copy of the symmetric cipher key. Each header had the symmetric cipher key encrypted with multiple different public keys, including a fallback whose private key only existed in on paper in a vault. Each system could reach out to other storage systems to ask them to use their private key to decrypt the header (for example if their hardware security module had failed), but in some configurations this would require an operator to intervene to enter in passphrase to unlock the hardware security module to authorize the action. This means that: 1. The symmetric cipher key could always be recovered, even from paper backup 2. Having physical access to a disk or any set of disks did not allow you to read the data 3. Having physical access to a disk and a hardware security module did not allow you to read the disk (unless you knew the passphrase, which was always present, and user set) 4. Having physical access to disks, servers, and hardware security module may not allow you to read the data (in the more secure configuration where passphrases were not cached on disk -- but this meant that rebooting required an operator to manually enter the password at boot) 5. The set of valid public keys could be changed frequently (this was indeed automated and only the set of currently active hardware security modules could decrypt the current disk header) Of course you could always short circuit this by making a copy of the symmetric key when you did have access (e.g., `dmsetup table --showkeys`) but without putting some more hardware in the fast/hot path that was unavoidable. The symmetric key could not easily be changed, without rewriting the entire disk (though since it was a storage system designed to accommodate multiple failures, this wasn't that hard, but we didn't do it automatically) The hardware security modules we used were FIPS 140-2 validated and physically connected to the racks (though it would be possible to cut them away). It would also be possible to spy on the APDUs sent to the modules to capture the decrypted data, since there was not mutual authentication (it was in the works though).
    - jtchang 5y ago
      Is there anything on the consumer level like this?
      - rkeene2 5y ago
jnwatson 5y ago
It is trivial in the Ubuntu installer.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  It's not trivial when it comes to a server. Sure, you can tick that checkbox you'll enable encryption, but when you reboot you realize that you can't actually SSH in it, as it's waiting for a key to be entered on the physical console. Entering (and managing) that key is the hard part.
  - jcynix 5y ago
    That's what Dropbear is supposed to do, it can be included in the initramfs of a server: https://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html https://matt.ucc.asn.au/dropbear/dropbear.html Disclaimer: I still didn't try it myself yet, but it's on my (too long) list of things to do.
    - gnufx 5y ago
      [I don't think it has to be dropbear specifically.] https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Remote_LUKS_Unlocking https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Remote_LUKS_Unlocking has a recipe also including Tor. You still have to be present to unlock the system, unlike with Mandos -- which I wish I'd been able to set up for our office, even before the Great Work From Home.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

madaxe_again 5y ago

They say they’re iso27001 compliant and certified. If they aren’t encrypting in transit, it’s hard to see how they actually can be.

unilynx 5y ago
Are you sure they're actually saying that? A lot of hosting providers actually say that their data centers are ISO 27001 compliant, but that doesn't make the provider itself compliant (and it seems scaleway is still doing that too on https://www.scaleway.com/en/datacenter/ https://www.scaleway.com/en/datacenter/)
- madaxe_again 5y ago
  Well, that’s ridiculous - an asset cannot be compliant - an organisation, and their processes and controls are what are meant to be compliant. If just their data centres are compliant, I guess there’s nothing to stop their staff or contractors just stealing data, as they have here - as compliance purely around physical security for a data centre is 100% meaningless if you’re just ignoring cryptographic controls and human security controls. I’m guessing their certification body isn’t themselves certified. Actually, the fact that they neither say who their certifying body is nor include a link to their certificate, suggests to me that they are lying - which is far more common than you would think.
  - unilynx 5y ago
    I assume they don't mean to refer to the physical building, but to the organisation responsible for the building and its physical security. Anyway that's a thing for auditors to have fun with (so you say you're hosting provider is certified, can you show me their certificate?) as you're not supposed to lean on their website information anyway. I don't think many of the competitors in this space (eg Linode and DigitalOocean) own their datacenters either. As Linode put it: Linode as an entity is not ISO27001 and we rely on the data centers we colocate with to obtain and maintain these certifications Or DigitalOcean in 2017: Our FRA1 facility is ISO9001:2008, ISO27001:2005, and ISO22301:2012 certified. (DigitalOcean later got their own certification)