Thanks all for the input on this topic. I have gotten many ideas from the discussion, and hopefully I'll be able to put some of them to work. But I do have one more question. > It is impossible to securely automate crypto. Using specialised > tamper-resistant hardware minimises risk, but that pesky passphrase is > still stored programmatically - it's just inside a black box with semi- > proprietary I/O, hardware and algorithms. If using a standard computer > to decrypt, it must be protected via additional mechanisms to minimise > risk. Semi-automated crypto is more secure - but then someone needs to > type a password somewhere. Automated private-key approaches should not > be used. If the passphrase were to be entered by hand, say at boot time or some such, would the security gain be much greater (depending on the strength of the passphrase of course)? Is a brute force attack on the passphrase the only reasonably possible means by which one can decrypt the data? Again, thanks for all the wonderful input! -- // Andrew MacKenzie | http://www.edespot.com // "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education" // -- Albert Einstein.
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