Re: Is ZFS native encryption safe to use?

On 8/22/23 18:02, iio7@tutanota.com wrote:
> There seems to be a bit of open (and rather old) ZFS native encryption
> bugs which still haven't been fixed and it doesn't look like it is
> something that is being working on.
> 
> Last night I was going to move some important files from an unencrypted
> dataset to a new encrypted (ZFS native) one, but then got my doubts
> about doing that (looking at all the different open GitHub issues on
> OpenZFS).
> 
> There exist some rumors about the original company which did the ZFS
>   native encryption work (the person doing the work left the company),
>   and they haven't done more since.
> 
> What is the general experience running with ZFS native encryption on
> FreeBSD? Is it better to use GELI for the whole pool instead?
> 

I am not familiar with the development status of OpenZFS native 
encryption, but I use both GELI and native encryption.  IMHO they serve 
different use-cases.

I tend to prefer GELI, it works really well on FreeBSD in my experience 
and performance has been a non-issue on both my workstation and server 
systems.  I also think it tends to be well suited if you are trying to 
ensure 3rd parties are not able to access your data if they obtain a 
disk.  For example, in a colo environment FDE is the way to go if you 
can't physically ensure your disks are being destroyed correctly.

I use ZFS native encryption when GELI isn't suitable.  For example I 
will use this for sensitive VM images on my servers.  The attack vector 
I'm trying to protect myself against is someone gaining access to my 
hypervisor and trying to seal a VM image.  Generally I feel like the 
utility of this is pretty minor - if someone has rooted my box they can 
just grab the info they want at run time since I'll already have 
decrypted the disk when mounting it.

Having said all of that, I've had zero issues with both implementations 
in terms of perf and reliability.  At the end of the day it comes down 
to what your use-case is.  I've found 9 times out of 10 GELI is the way 
to go in my experience.

-pete



-- 
Pete Wright
pete@nomadlogic.org
@nomadlogicLA