Encryption

USB sticks become increasingly common to carry around. When one keeps confidential data on such an USB medium, it should be protected against loss (and it should also be possible to use it for transferring files to and from an untrusted machine, just for convenience).

To get an encrypted home directory under Debian Linux, only a few steps are necessary. The performance hit for the encryption is, at least for current processors and normal (i.e. slow compared to all other PC components) harddisks, negligible.

Motivation Suspend, a.k.a. hibernate, is an important method for usability of today’s laptops. There are essentially two flavors with different implications on security: Suspend-to-RAM (ACPI S3): This means that the processes are frozen, and all hardware components besides the main RAM (and minimal activity do refresh the DRAM cells) are turned off.