this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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Encrypting without full disk encryption question (piefed.ca)
submitted 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) by teppa@piefed.ca to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I use a headless server connected to nothing but an ethernet cable in my basement, and I'd prefer to allow the thing to boot by itself and start up without me needing to unlock the disk encryption every single time I do an update or power back on. Its a Dell 9500t NUC that I'm using it as a server and am wondering whether its possible to encrypt everything still.

I do generally use docker containers, so could I potentially encrypt just the containers themselves, assuming I'm worried about a smash and grab rather than someone keeping the machine powered up and reading my ram?

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[–] I2jgwh0hYtxrCZQ@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

I read somewhere someone had their encryption key on their phone / another server and had the server pull the key via ftp on boot. Then the server and encryption key is separated but can decrypt its self as long on the ftp server is available.

Edit - might have been unraid where the OS and data drivers are separate

[–] lorentz@feddit.it 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I've configured something similar. The /boot partition is the only unencrypted. In the initramfs there is a script that downloads half of the decryption key from http, while the other half is stored in the script itself. The script implements automated retry until it can fetch the key and decrypt the root partition.

My attack model here is that, as soon as I realize someone stole my NAS I can shutdown the server hosting half of the decryption key making my data safe. There is a window where the attacker could connect it to a network and decrypt the data, but it is made more difficult by the static network configuration: they should have a default gateway with the same IP address of mine.

On my TODO list I also have to implement some sort of notification to get an alert when the decryption key is fetched from internet.

[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 1 points 34 minutes ago

On my TODO list I also have to implement some sort of notification to get an alert when the decryption key is fetched from internet.

Why is it fetchable by arbitrary IPs from the internet? I'd think you'd lock it down to an IP/only make it available locally.