this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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[Image description:
Screenshot of terminal output:

~ ❯ lsblk
NAME           MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINTS
sda              8:0    1  62.5M  0 disk  
└─topLuks      254:2    0  60.5M  0 crypt 
  └─bottomLuks 254:3    0  44.5M  0 crypt

/end image description]

I had no idea!

If anyone else is curious, it's pretty much what you would expect:

cryptsetup -y -v luksFormat /dev/sda
cryptsetup open /dev/sda topLuks
cryptsetup -y -v luksFormat /dev/mapper/topLuks
cryptsetup open /dev/mapper/topLuks bottomLuks
lsblk

Then you can make a filesystem and mount it:

mkfs.ext4 /dev/mapper/bottomLuks
mount /dev/mapper/bottomLuks ~/mnt/embeddedLuksTest

I've tested putting files on it and then unmounting & re-encrypting it, and the files are indeed still there upon decrypting and re-mounting.

Again, sorry if this is not news to anyone else, but I didn't realise this was possible before, and thought it was very cool when I found it out. Sharing in case other people didn't know and also find it cool :)

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)

AES has been accelerated on all Intel CPUs since Broadwell, was common as far back as Sandy Bridge, and has been available since Westmere.

AMD has had AES acceleration since Bulldozer.

But the commenter is right that adding a second layer of encryption is useless in everything except very specific circumstances.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (5 children)

agreed that it is useless for most cases but I could see it being useful if you need multiple people to agree on decrypting a file.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

multiple people to agree on decrypting a file

For that, you would use Shamir's Secret Sharing algorithm rather than multiple encryption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_secret_sharing

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

that's another way, I guess.... if you want to split the file, that is

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

No, you don't split the file. You split the master decryption key.

Each user just needs to remember their own password, and SSS can reconstruct the master key when enough users enter their passwords.

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