News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Ask HN: What are the best practises for using SSH keys?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What are the best practises for using SSH keys? by michaelt on Sunday September 25, 2016 @03:35PM (#12576969)
The default encryption on Ubuntu, if you select 'Encrypt my home folder' during setup, uses ecryptfs on your home folder, and cryptswap for swap. For some reason, /tmp/ isn't encrypted by default as far as I can tell.

AFAIK the main benefit is: if you want to run a multi-user or headless system, you need the network stack brought up before a password is entered - which home directory encryption provides and FDE can't.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: What are the best practises for using SSH keys? by majewsky on Sunday September 25, 2016 @06:35PM (#12577828)
> For some reason, /tmp/ isn't encrypted by default as far as I can tell.

It does not give any extra benefit because tmpfs only resides in RAM, and disk encryption typically only concerns data at rest.

If you come to a point where you want to have /tmp/ encrypted, you would rather encrypt the whole RAM. (Does anyone actually do that?)

[ Parent | on HN ]