February 27, 2007
Use the --force, LUKS
Yet Another Project at Work has become very interesting, indeed. My favoritest times in college were programming. Kernel programming, specifically. What I like to dub my master's design thesis was a novel take on encrypted filesystems. Myself and my friends Divyakaran (now works for the 'zon) and Yuhua (disappeared?) made perhaps the Best Encrypted Filesystem ev4r. LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup) is a project that actually does most of the same things that we did. It does some things a lot better, like not hacking the superblock to fit a key in. It also has a much better way of erasing old passwords than our system. But the principle was the same (eventually with ours, anyway): store keys where you could, change the way the filesystem mounted slightly and as seamlessly as possible. Later, I made it re-use the same cryptographic material, so you could change the disk password without having to decrypt and re-encrypt every filesystem block. Second star to the right, and straight on 'till morning.
I'm working to expand the specification now. What I want is to create a PKCS#11 solution, so we can all use smartcards to set up our keys. The symmetric key used to encrypt the disk would be just some random data (really random data if you will). We would then encrypt the symmetric key with each intended user's public key, using the PKI. Really it wouldn't matter where they had their private key. It could on a smartcard, on a floppy disk, whatever. It doesn't matter, so long as the data is secure and the user is responsible enough. They'd need their private key to decrypt the symmetric key, then they could decrypt the disk via cryptsetup. Voilla! I'd still have to figure out a way to elegantly handle certificate revocations, but otherwise everything is there in my head, and slowly going into some C files. Neat.
I think the changes won't be very painful, and it makes sense to expand the system in such a way. The key storage method should really be separate from the cryptosetup implementation. I've never had too much patience plowing through hundreds of documents of previous projects though -- it's more fun to just make it go first and see what the world thinks later. So it's on to project number 5 of Really Neat Things Reid is Doing At The Moment -- a little bit of reading to make sure it isn't done (seems doubtful because LUKS is pretty new). Here's hoping my bald head doesn't lose any more hair from the coding to come. Time for another case of guarana.
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Further back...
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Previous Trips...
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Hiking Mount Whitney, 2007 
Spring Break in West Virginia, 2005
New Year's in Paris, 2003-2004
Coming to America, 2003
Protesting in Berlin, 2003
Prague Bier-Tour, 2002
Dresden, 2002
Recent Reading
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The Curve of Binding Energy
John McPhee follows famous physicist Ted Taylor in this piece that was -- and probably still -- ahead of its time.
Originally published in 1973, McPhee outlined the coming security and environmental issues surrounding the plutonium enrichment processes. For the most part, though, McPhee invites the reader to draw his or her own conclusions, although he does point out the ease with which any number of people could obtain the material (though not necessarily the manufacturing prowess) to make an atomic weapon.
The question still sits in my mind after reading -- are we being too paranoid, or not paranoid enough?
Rated 
by reid
on October 01, 2007
by reid
on October 01, 2007
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Zodiac
Zodiac touts itself as an 'eco-thriller,' and it is just that. Told from the first-person perspective of ST (or Sangamon Taylor), the book recounts a roughly six-month period of his life busting big corporations for violating environmental laws.
Not the tree-hugging political activist type, ST is equipped with chem labs, scuba divers, maps, and an organization (GEE International, the Group of Environmental Extremists) that masterfully brings the press into the fold to scare the public with the very real dangers posed by illegal dumping. It's sort of a Sierra Club member's wet dream -- a band of ecowarriors that actually get things done.
ST finds something odd happening in Boston Harbor during his tale: a new form of pollution that could poison everyone on the planet in a matter of weeks. His quest to uncover exactly who and what is causing the latest spike in toxins goes all the way up to the President of the United States, and could end up costing him his own life.
While a neat and fast-paced tale, the novel drags on a bit toward the end, begging disbelief from even the most forgiving sci-fi folk. While not as good as his latest offerings, it's still a great read for those that enjoy a good Stephenson novel (or even those who don't).
Rated 
by reid
on July 17, 2005
by reid
on July 17, 2005
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Cat's Cradle
A few years ago, I attempted to woo an online datee, and she immediately criticized me for my politics. I protested the war on Iraq, which was "a shame." She defended her position of complete noninvolvement by standing behind Vonnegut.
It may seem odd to open a review that way. My assumption is now not that she was an idiot, but that she had only read Cat's Cradle, and only with a rather odd viewpoint.
Cat's Cradle looks at a cold-war world where the personifications of religious, political, and scientific single-mindedness collide to destroy the world.
Vonnegut tells a masterful tale, but it makes me wonder what one person's indifference would do to prevent us from all dying? So for now I will continue to unblindly stop unjust wars, even while I'm only reading.
Rated by reid
on July 17, 2005
by reid
on July 17, 2005