1.1. Setting up the partition layout

Your hard disk (hda) should contain at least three partitions:

• hda1: this small unencrypted partition will ask for a password in order to mount the encrypted root filesystem.

• hda2: this partition will contain your encrypted root filesystem; make sure it is large enough.

• hda3: this partition holds the current GNU/Linux system.

At this point, both hda1 and hda2 are unused. hda3 is where your Linux distribution is currently installed; /usr and /boot must not be separated from this partition.

Here's an example of what your partition layout might look like:

# fdisk -l /dev/hda Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2432 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 1 1 8001 83 Linux /dev/hda2 2 263 2104515 83 Linux /dev/hda3 264 525 2104515 83 Linux /dev/hda4 526 2047 12225465 83 Linux

1.2. Required packages

If you use Debian, the following packages are mandatory:

apt-get install gcc make libncurses5-dev patch bzip2 wget

To make copy & paste easier, you should also install:

apt-get install lynx gpm

1.3. Installing Linux-2.4.29

There are two main projects which add loopback encryption support in the kernel: cryptoloop and loop-AES. This howto is based on loop-AES, since it features an extremely fast and highly optimized implementation of Rijndael in assembly language, and therefore provides maximum performance if you have an IA-32 (x86) CPU. Besides, there are some security concerns about cryptoloop.

First of all, download and unpack the loop-AES package:

cd /usr/src wget http://loop-aes.sourceforge.net/loop-AES/loop-AES-v3.0b.tar.bz2 tar -xvjf loop-AES-v3.0b.tar.bz2

Then you must download and patch the kernel source:

wget http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/linux-2.4.29.tar.bz2 tar -xvjf linux-2.4.29.tar.bz2 cd linux-2.4.29 rm include/linux/loop.h drivers/block/loop.c patch -Np1 -i ../loop-AES-v3.0b/kernel-2.4.28.diff

Setup the keyboard map:

dumpkeys | loadkeys -m - > drivers/char/defkeymap.c

Next, configure your kernel; make sure the following options are set:

make menuconfig Block devices ---> <*> Loopback device support [*] AES encrypted loop device support (NEW) <*> RAM disk support (4096) Default RAM disk size (NEW) [*] Initial RAM disk (initrd) support File systems ---> <*> Ext3 journalling file system support <*> Second extended fs support (important note: do not enable /dev file system support)

Compile the kernel and install it:

make dep bzImage make modules modules_install cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz

If grub is your bootloader, update /boot/grub/menu.lst or /boot/grub/grub.conf:

cat > /boot/grub/menu.lst << EOF default 0 timeout 10 color green/black light-green/black title Linux root (hd0,2) kernel /boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hda3 EOF

Otherwise, update /etc/lilo.conf and run lilo:

cat > /etc/lilo.conf << EOF lba32 boot=/dev/hda prompt timeout=60 image=/boot/vmlinuz label=Linux read-only root=/dev/hda3 EOF lilo

You may now restart the system.

1.4. Installing Linux-2.6.10

Proceed as described in the previous section, using loop-aes' kernel-2.6.10.diff patch instead, and make sure cryptoloop support is not activated. Note that modules support require that you have the module-init-tools package installed.

1.5. Installing util-linux-2.12p

The losetup program, which is part of the util-linux package, must be patched and recompiled in order to add strong cryptography support. Download, unpack and patch util-linux:

cd /usr/src wget http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/util-linux-2.12p.tar.bz2 tar -xvjf util-linux-2.12p.tar.bz2 cd util-linux-2.12p patch -Np1 -i ../loop-AES-v3.0b/util-linux-2.12p.diff

To use passwords that are less than 20 characters, enter:

CFLAGS="-O2 -DLOOP_PASSWORD_MIN_LENGTH=8"; export CFLAGS

Security is certainly your major concern. For this reason, please do not enable passwords shorter than 20 characters. Data privacy is not free, one has to 'pay' in form of long passwords.

Compile losetup and install it as root:

./configure && make lib mount mv -f /sbin/losetup /sbin/losetup~ rm -f /usr/share/man/man8/losetup.8* cd mount gzip losetup.8 cp losetup /sbin cp losetup.8.gz /usr/share/man/man8/ chattr +i /sbin/losetup

3.1. Creating the ramdisk

To begin with, chroot inside the encrypted partition and create the boot device mount point:

chroot /mnt/efs mkdir /loader

Then, create the initial ramdisk (initrd), which will be needed afterwards:

cd dd if=/dev/zero of=initrd bs=1k count=4096 mke2fs -F initrd mkdir ramdisk mount -o loop initrd ramdisk

If you're using grsecurity, you may get a "Permission denied" error message; in this case you'll have to run the mount command outside chroot.

Create the filesystem hierarchy and copy the required files in it:

mkdir ramdisk/{bin,dev,lib,mnt,sbin} cp /bin/{bash,mount} ramdisk/bin/ ln -s bash ramdisk/bin/sh mknod -m 600 ramdisk/dev/console c 5 1 mknod -m 600 ramdisk/dev/hda2 b 3 2 mknod -m 600 ramdisk/dev/loop0 b 7 0 cp /lib/{ld-linux.so.2,libc.so.6,libdl.so.2} ramdisk/lib/ cp /lib/{libncurses.so.5,libtermcap.so.2} ramdisk/lib/ cp /sbin/{losetup,pivot_root} ramdisk/sbin/

It's ok if you see a message like "/lib/libncurses.so.5: No such file or directory", or "/lib/libtermcap.so.2: No such file or directory"; bash only requires one of these two libraries. You can check which one is actually required with:

ldd /bin/bash

Compile the sleep program, which will prevent the password prompt being flooded by kernel messages (such as usb devices being registered).

cat > sleep.c << "EOF" #include <unistd.h> #include <stdlib.h> int main( int argc, char *argv[] ) { if( argc == 2 ) sleep( atoi( argv[1] ) ); return( 0 ); } EOF gcc -s sleep.c -o ramdisk/bin/sleep rm sleep.c

Create the init script:

cat > ramdisk/sbin/init << "EOF" #!/bin/sh /bin/sleep 3 echo -n "Enter seed value: " read SEED /sbin/losetup -e aes256 -S $SEED /dev/loop0 /dev/hda2 /bin/mount -r -n -t ext3 /dev/loop0 /mnt while [ $? -ne 0 ] do /sbin/losetup -d /dev/loop0 /sbin/losetup -e aes256 -S $SEED /dev/loop0 /dev/hda2 /bin/mount -r -n -t ext3 /dev/loop0 /mnt done cd /mnt /sbin/pivot_root . loader exec /usr/sbin/chroot . /sbin/init EOF chmod 755 ramdisk/sbin/init

Umount the loopback device and compress the initrd:

umount -d ramdisk rmdir ramdisk gzip initrd mv initrd.gz /boot/

3.2. Booting from a CD-ROM

I strongly advise you to start your system with a read-only media, such as a bootable CD-ROM.

Download and unpack syslinux:

wget http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/syslinux-3.07.tar.bz2 tar -xvjf syslinux-3.07.tar.bz2

Configure isolinux:

mkdir bootcd cp /boot/{vmlinuz,initrd.gz} syslinux-3.07/isolinux.bin bootcd echo "DEFAULT /vmlinuz initrd=initrd.gz ro root=/dev/ram0" \ > bootcd/isolinux.cfg

Create and burn the bootable cd-rom iso image:

mkisofs -o bootcd.iso -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat \ -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table \ -J -hide-rr-moved -R bootcd/ cdrecord -dev 0,0,0 -speed 4 -v bootcd.iso rm -rf bootcd{,.iso}

3.3. Booting from a HD partition

The boot partition can come in handy if you happen to lose your bootable CD. Remember that hda1 is a writable media and is thus insecure; use it only in case of emergency!

Create and mount the ext2 filesystem:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 bs=8192 mke2fs /dev/hda1 mount /dev/hda1 /loader

Copy the kernel and the initial ramdisk:

cp /boot/{vmlinuz,initrd.gz} /loader

If you use grub:

mkdir /loader/boot cp -av /boot/grub /loader/boot/ cat > /loader/boot/grub/menu.lst << EOF default 0 timeout 10 color green/black light-green/black title Linux root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz ro root=/dev/ram0 initrd /initrd.gz EOF grub-install --root-directory=/loader /dev/hda umount /loader

If you use lilo:

mkdir /loader/{boot,dev,etc} cp /boot/boot.b /loader/boot/ mknod -m 600 /loader/dev/hda b 3 0 mknod -m 600 /loader/dev/hda1 b 3 1 mknod -m 600 /loader/dev/hda2 b 3 2 mknod -m 600 /loader/dev/hda3 b 3 3 mknod -m 600 /loader/dev/hda4 b 3 4 mknod -m 600 /loader/dev/ram0 b 1 0 cat > /loader/etc/lilo.conf << EOF lba32 boot=/dev/hda prompt timeout=60 image=/vmlinuz label=Linux initrd=/initrd.gz read-only root=/dev/ram0 EOF lilo -r /loader umount /loader