Hi, 
I recently installed debian etch with the full-drive encryption option the 
installer offers.
Now everything but the boot partition is encrypted.

I was concerned about the fact, that there is one simple way to circumvent the 
hole encryption system if someone has physical access to the pc: to simply 
replace the kernel or initrd at the boot partition to include some trojan 
horses, or something else...

I do not know of anything in a standard debian installation, which monitors 
this, so I've writen some little scripts for this purpose :-)
It's more or less an idea / proof of concept for now, there are no checks in 
it. For example if /boot has to be mounted before updating etc... nor it's 
immune against manipulation for its own, e.g. the modified initrd can simply 
update the bootmd5 database by its own ;-) ...

It simply checks the md5sum of all files in /boot and if there are new or 
vanished files.
It has to be run after every kernel update, needless to say.

No, I know I'm not a security expert. So please tell me, If I'm completely 
wrong :-). For any answer to this list, please CC me, I'm not a list member 
(for now).

Sincerely
Michael Heide

Attachment: checkboot.tar.gz
Description: Binary data

Reply via email to