Re: File on disk in linux (encrypted?)

From: Barry Margolin (barmar@genuity.net)
Date: 12/18/02 

From: Barry Margolin <barmar@genuity.net>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 16:34:50 GMT

In article <d2f25cc8c3b184e6ab07676f8524371a.96960@mygate.mailgate.org>,
Sachin Garg <schngrg@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Is a file on disk (in linux) encrypted or not?

Unless you're using a special encrypting file system driver, I wouldn't
expect it to be.

>I think it should be as if it is not encrypted, it can be accessed using
>low level disk I/O, thus failing the whole security mechanism.

You need to have either superuser permission or physical access to the
drive to do this. Most computer security mechanisms are not intended to
protect against such cases. 

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar@genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.

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