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Comment by FiloSottile | Hacker News Reader

Ehhmmmm. stares at feet

I wish I could tell you anything better than "in my defense, I seem to forget only one vital password per year..."

(But seriously, I never risked data: the WD didn't have FDE, it was just a matter of salvaging the hardware; the OpenBSD was still in the middle of a migration and I had the source still accessible, so it was a matter of saving time. And it's fun.)

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> I seem to forget only one vital password per year

For me, it helps to enter the passwords from time to time. The easiest way to do this is to reboot.

If you have moral issues with rebooting a system where rebooting is not necessary, maybe run just the password checker, e.g. by unlocking a second volume that has the same password, or something.

I would probably forget my FDE passphrase if my laptop did not have a processor fault causing it to spontaneously reboot every couple weeks (particularly in hotter weather.)

I've recently gotten in the habit of writing passwords (or at least a part of them) down in a notebook. There are just too many passwords to remember, some of which I use very very rarely. I don't trust any password managers running on a networked computer or (gasp) phone, so paper is good for me. Plus it's more reliable.

Simply put (since the article neglected to include the password), what should we learn from the article?

I imagine the password was "too short".

PS - My POV is fully critical. Please, do not be personally offended. [emoticon smile]

I think the thing to learn from the article is "how to go deep diving into an operating system's internals"

>what should we learn from the article?

Off-the shelf NAS' security is shit.

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