On 7/29/25 4:58 PM, Jeremy Stanley wrote:
On 2025-07-29 21:27:51 +0100 (+0100), Sean Mooney wrote: [...]
`in general if someone can acess the host filesystem and read the nova.conf your security evnolope has already been breached. [...]
It's not uncommon in naïve security policies that are primarily concerned with "data at rest" to require all sensitive information on disk be encrypted. Their authors are typically focused on what happens if a decommissioned hard drive or stray backup tape falls into the wrong hands. As you note, there's a substantial Catch-22 here, in that the client keys for accessing the remote service represent a similar risk unless kept isolated, e.g. in an HSM. A cautionary comment here. A fair number of years ago I purchased a tape backup library system on eBay. It arrived and had a number of tapes still installed inside. For lark I looked to see if there was data on the tapes. ..... Well there was some. It was the database backup from an HMO in California. It included personal information. I did not look too deep but did verify that a few names still existed and they contact information was up to date.
So scrub those disks and other media before you junk them. In another case a company I was working with went bankrupt. The hardware was sold by the bankruptcy firm but it included the full Unix system V source code on some of the disks. The guy who bought the hardware apparently tried to ransom it back to AT&T but if my memory serves me correctly it did not go well for him. Clean up is important. -- Alvin Starr || land: (905)513-7688 Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133 alvin@netvel.net ||