[asterisk-users] Hide the plain text password

[Kevin P. Fleming]

On 02/15/2011 06:08 PM, Jian Gao wrote:
> How about encrypt the whole hard drive?
>
> If I built a server and give to other people, there is no easy way to
> stop them reset the root password or just mount my drive to read
> everything on it. But if build an encrypt OS then it will be secure. My
> question here are: <1>Is this against Asterisk GPL? <2>How about the
> performance on such a system?

As long as you are providing the source code for Asterisk to anyone you 
distribute the binaries to, it does not matter how you distribute the 
binaries (encrypted or otherwise).

However, encryption is not going to solve your problem: if the person 
you give the system to will have physical access to the system, then 
they will be able to access the filesystem after it is mounted. The 
passphrase for the filesystem has to be present at boot time for the 
system to be able to boot, so either it will be provided automatically 
or the user will be told what it is. In either case, the encryption 
won't end up protecting anything from the user.

Encrypting filesystems or hard drives is designed to address a totally 
different need... it's for protecting the contents of the hard drive 
from someone who isn't supposed to have access to it, not the system's 
normal user.

-- 
Kevin P. Fleming
Digium, Inc. | Director of Software Technologies
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
skype: kpfleming | jabber: kfleming at digium.com
Check us out at www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org