So interesting when you dive into a topic, and you realize it is not black and white. It is like an onion, and have layers.

I am setting up my own cloud, and dove into data-at-rest-encryption.

For an average user of a cloud, how would you approach encryption? Is my data encrypted, secret? It sounds kind of yes or no.

But this is not that easy.

You can encrypt only content, then your filenames can be readable, but not its content. Filenames can give away some information, that could help attackers to decide if it worth a try. Like passwords.txt ...

If you encrypt also the filename, your content and filename is safe, but not the metadata like file size. But you can use less characters for your filenames, because the encryption will make it longer, but still you whave to fit in 255 characters max filename length. Also in such case, you encrypt on file level, where attackers can know that there are encrypted files.

If you encrypt a whole device/partition you won't have separate files to see, until the partition is decrypted. Therefore, even file metadata is safe. In such a case, if you erase your partition properly before, from an outsider without decrypting the partition, your partition can look like only random data.

Good morning! ☕️

#nostr #grownostr #plebchain