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How safe is revoking a LUKS key on flash media? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm planning to set up LUKS on an SSD. Many guides are suggesting using a simple key to set things up and then revoke it when everything is in place.

Given the wear leveling behavior on SSDs I am assuming a simple key might be able to unlock even beyond the revocation if a determined attacker has the disk. I don't want someone to be able to put the disk in factory access mode and be able to brute force attempt their way to browser cookies and email accounts.

I'm going to ignore the suggestion about using a weak key to set up, but am I being overly paranoid? Am I being not paranoid enough and I should also not rely on revocation for a spinning rust disk?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I'd be very suspicious at what else this guide has for you if it advises to use "key" passphrase for a LUKS key.

With that said, most SSDs do encrypt data before it reaches the NAND. I don't know what "factory access mode" is and whether that can get around it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think yeah, I will not be following that advice for sure. Just wondering at this point if someone should take extra precautions around SSD encryption. Like should one overwrite the whole drive if a key is leaked so that the odds of recovering any info from the chips is lessened? Or is revoking the leaked key sufficient?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

It all depends on the threat model. If I were protecting against accidental data disclosure after decommissioning an SSD, then revoking would suffice. However if I were a journalist gathering data on some unsavory state subjects, I'd probably only ever use high-entropy keys.