Goal / Danger: Attack by malicious root

[Jan Petranek <jan@petranek.de>]

dear guys,

did You consider the possibility of an malicious root attacks? In most
Linuxdistributions, the priviliged user can read & manipulate all of the user's
data. 

This is indeed a situation I find myself in today: I am working on a
Linux-Machine in the university's computer pool. And I find my own
(non-encrypted) home directory far too insecure to put a private key or
something like that in here.  This is also from the point of view, that the
root-login may be hacked on a campus site like this.

So to me, there is a need of encrypting the user's data. The question of the
key yet remains: A key like a password / passphrase is quite limited in it's
length (by the memory of the user). A key on a medium (like a CD-ROM,
chipcard etc.) could be longer, but still there is the demand, that it can't be read by 
somebody else (not even the superuser), when mounted /
used by the user.
Also, the key medium could compromise the encryption, but that is another
problem.

I'd be quite glad, if you could take this point in consideration,

JanP



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