Tinker wrote: > Ah, and maybe equally importantly, what are the security ramifications > of changing password/keydisk vs. wiping and installing from scratch with > a new password/keydisk?
The master key, which the data on disk is encrypted with, is masked with your password. The master key never changes. But if you change your password, the mask changes. The master key is not recoverable with the old password. > Say that you would change password/keydisk today, and then next week > someone gets a copy of your encrypted disk, and of your previous > password/keydisk. > > Would they be able to extract any part of the disk information then, if > not why? However, if somebody has a copy of your disk today (with old password) and they later, next month, learn your old password, they can decrypt that disk. That should be obvious. But they also now have a copy of the master key. So if they get your new disk, they can also decrypt that. Changing passwords is convenient, but if you have somehow lost control of either the password or the disk, it would be safer to start over.
