How to use Serpent

Fabian Stargalla <[email protected]> Mon, 28 Aug 2023 01:37:58 +0200
Newsgroups dev.linux.lists.cryptsetup
Message-ID <CAMEBZxWhAmwuJqpvtk0mh5vceEp_9AEs46DKC94vGQkrqW6uCg@mail.gmail.com>
Hello everyone!

Please excuse me if my post in this mailing list seems a bit out of
place; I am fairly new to mailing lists, and this is actually my very
first post.

I would like to seek advice from someone who is familiar with the
Serpent cipher, encryption and cryptsetup in general.
Currently, I'm planning my new Arch installation with a BTRFS
filesystem that is encrypted using cryptsetup and LUKS, and I'm
finding little to no information on how to properly use the Serpent
cipher for system encryption, as well as for encrypting hard drives
solely for data storage, and for a swap partition to enable
hibernation support.
From what I've read and understood so far, it would be best to use
Serpent for my system encryption in the same way AES is used by
default with LUKS, that would be serpent-xts-plain64, but I'm not 100%
sure and can't verify it any other way than to ask here.
Furthermore, I would also like to know if the XTS mode with plain64 is
also appropriate and works well for my swap partition and my data
storage drives/partitions?

Just in case someone says I should just be using default AES (like in
one thread on the Arch forum):
My primary concern is the higher level of security that Serpent
offers, which is why I prefer it over the default AES encryption. That
also means that speed is completely irrelevant to me, as long as it
remains within a bearable range.

I would be really pleased and very grateful if someone would be so
kind as to offer me some advice on these 3 questions.

Thanks,
fabestah