What’s the point on a rented VPS? The provider can just dump the decryption key from RAM.
bare metal servers (at scale way) rather than VMs. These things die very abruptly
Had this happen to me with two Dedibox (scaleway) servers over a few months (I had backups, no big deal but annoying). wtf do they do with their machines to burn through them at this rate??
I don’t know if they can “just” dump the key from RAM on a bare metal server. Nevertheless, it covers my ass when they retire the server after I used it.
And yeah I’ve had quite a few servers die on me (usually the hard drive). At this point I’m wondering if it isn’t scheduled obsolescence to force you into buying their new hardware every now and then. Regardless, I’m slowly moving off scaleway as their support is now mediocre in these cases, and their cheapest servers don’t support console access anymore, which means you’re bound to using their distro.
I’d encrypt all disks.
Nevertheless, it covers my ass when they retire the server after I used it.
Good point. How do you unlock the disk at boot time? dropbear-initramfs and enter the passphrase manually every time it boots? Unencrypted /boot/ and store the decryption key in plaintext there?
I run openbsd on all my servers so I would be entering the passphrase manually at boot time. Saving the key on unencrypted /boot is basically locking your door and leaving the key on it :)
What’s the point on a rented VPS? The provider can just dump the decryption key from RAM.
Had this happen to me with two Dedibox (scaleway) servers over a few months (I had backups, no big deal but annoying). wtf do they do with their machines to burn through them at this rate??
I don’t know if they can “just” dump the key from RAM on a bare metal server. Nevertheless, it covers my ass when they retire the server after I used it.
And yeah I’ve had quite a few servers die on me (usually the hard drive). At this point I’m wondering if it isn’t scheduled obsolescence to force you into buying their new hardware every now and then. Regardless, I’m slowly moving off scaleway as their support is now mediocre in these cases, and their cheapest servers don’t support console access anymore, which means you’re bound to using their distro.
Good point. How do you unlock the disk at boot time? dropbear-initramfs and enter the passphrase manually every time it boots? Unencrypted
/boot/and store the decryption key in plaintext there?I run openbsd on all my servers so I would be entering the passphrase manually at boot time. Saving the key on unencrypted
/bootis basically locking your door and leaving the key on it :)