Re: [PLUG] EFS

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2001 at 08:45:26PM -0500, Paul wrote:
> Isn't that stupid?  Why have encryption if someone can just 
> decrypt your files at will?

Yes, it is stupid.

But maybe less stupid at the file system level... suppose the super
user creates an encrypted file system and gives the private key to
users who are allowed to use it. After time, everybody forgets the
key. How do you recover the information if the super user
(Administrator, whatever) can't recover the file system?

The assumptions here are first that the Administrator account is
well protected (almost as a rule untrue in Windows installations,
but that's a totally orthogonal issue of usage, not of the OS's
functionality), and second that this EFS would be used to protect
company secrets, not personal secrets on company hardware. (You can
see how justifying allowance of the latter wouldn't fly so well in
the business world, I hope. "Sure boss, I need another 80 GB drive
for my... ah... high-bandwidth-web-site archival project.")

What you're looking for is privacy. That's different from security.
Encryption is a good tool for both, but the tool isn't used the same
way in both.

(There *are* file systems built for privacy. I think PGP's
commercial Windows product can encrypt an FS. That won't permit of
anyone but someone with the private key decrypting it.)

-- 
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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