On Wed, Oct 11, 2000 at 12:34:44PM +0200, Jaume Teixi (teixi@6tems.com) wrote: > Hi, > > I'm currently backing up to DAT tapes on a building where there are > other companies... > > There is a way to protect DAT backups in order to need a password for > restoring and reading ? > > I'm using dump Using tar, you could stream data through an encryption tool. This would probably significantly slow both backups and restores. I'm not sure what options are available for other mechanisms. By the nature of encryption, any single-bit change to the archive might then render the entire backup worthless. Encryption which allows arbitrary modifications to encrypted files is not secure. You are now balancing two needs -- security, and restorability -- and taking a significant risk that you'll be unable to restore your system. This also opens a new route of attack -- the attacker need only modify your backups in a very minor way to render them useless. IMO it's better to practice good physical security measures with backups, but to realize that backup media are a potential security risk. You're probably better off finding means to secure sensitive data on disk. The archive itself is not encrypted, but specific data files are. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://www.netcom.com/~kmself Evangelist, Opensales, Inc. http://www.opensales.org What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org GPG fingerprint: F932 8B25 5FDD 2528 D595 DC61 3847 889F 55F2 B9B0
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