Jeff Soules wrote:
...
>
>> The most intrusive attacks, where an attacker has complete control of
>> the user's machine (and can therefor modify EncFS, or FUSE, or the
>> kernel itself) are not guarded against. Do not assume that encrypted
>> files will protect your sensitive data if you enter your password into a
>> compromised computer. ...
>
> Seems to me that the man page is talking about two situations:
>
> #1. Someone has rooted your box. In this case, your encryption can be
> bypassed, because unless your secret passphrase is actually an entire
> RSA key, the password is just a gatekeeper and everything needed to
> decrypt the fs is on the box. A (sufficiently clever) attacker with
> root (and enough time) could modify the EncFS program itself to bypass
> the password check and just decrypt your files.
The password should be used to _encrypt_ the encryption key. Then you're
not vulnerable to bypassing of a password check.
But, as you said, if the machine is compromised, then once you enter the
password, the data can be decrypted.
Daniel
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