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Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Data Privacy from system administrator withrdif


From: Ryan How
Subject: Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Data Privacy from system administrator withrdiff-backup
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:16:58 +0900
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.18 (Windows/20081105)

Looked at this myself. It depends on whether you trust the remote machine. They could just replace the encfs command, get your password and read your data.

On Monday 29 December 2008 13:49:11 Dominic wrote:
 ... But I don't understand why it is not secure to use
encfs directly on the third party remote server (assuming that it is
available of course)? Something like this (sorry this is from a Windows
client hence use of plink and unusual escapes):

rdiff-backup --remote-schema "plink.exe -ssh -i mykey.ppk %s echo
""S3cr3tP4s5w0rd""^| encfs -S ~/archives-enc/ ~/archives/; rdiff-backup
--server; fusermount -u ~/archives/" "C:/Documents and Settings/Dominic/My
Documents" address@hidden::~/archives/mydocs;

My idea is that this will first  mount the encrypted directory
(~/archives-enc/) so that it can be read and written to unencrypted (as
~/archives/), then run rdiff-backup into this  directory, then unmount so
that thereafter the data can only be seen encrypted - unless you have the
password.
 Of course this way we have sent the password to the remote server, but we
have done so using ssh and I don't think this can be sniffed or found by
the server's system administrator (it is not saved in .bash_history) - or
can it be?

Well, assuming it works, that solution will theoreticly give the sysadmin in question access to all your data. In the space between where your ssh-session ends and your encfs begins all your data, as well as your encfs-password, will exist in the servers memory.

If this is a purely theoretical danger or a real threat most likely depends on what sysadmin you are dealing with, the sensitivity of the data, etc.

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