Re: 'discard' as default

Christoph Anton Mitterer <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.linux.kernel.device-mapper.dm-crypt
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On Thu, 2019-01-31 at 00:11 +0100, Jonas Meurer wrote:
> explain to users that they should always give the 'discard'
> option
> to new devices if they don't have a good reason to not do so

It's sad to see Debian giving bad advise to users, especially several
people said here upon being questioned, that it should be vice-versa…
i.e. using the more secure setting unless one has a good reason not to.

> I see that the discard option has security implications. Absolutely.
> Whether those are minor or major is debatable. My take on this is,
> that
> the tradeoff is acceptable and for the vast majority of users
> neglectable.

I cannot see that this has been anywhere proven by solid and extensive
crpytoanalysis.
Instead, past has always shown that even small leakage of information
can be a huge attack surface.

If it was 20 years ago, the question would have probably been:
 Can we enable compression without risk?
And the answer would have been:
 It's not clear whether it can be abused, but rather don't to it.
Then:
 Well let's still to it.
Then:
 CRIME and BEAST attacks. Oops.


> On the other side, having fstrim working per default
> even
> on encrypted volumes is a huge advantage.

I wonder what advantage it is for someone who deliberately decides to
use dm-crypt, to possibly weaken just this.


Well just my two cents. :-)

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