zeitgeist team mailing list archive

[Jacob Appelbaum <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To keep this cross desktop friendly, it makes sense to create a
Zeitgeist plugin that interfaces with many different keyring-manager
like thing-a-mabobs. Lets call it zeitgeist-keyring-helper.

I imagine that it would make sense to have a flow where when creating a
database, Zeitgeist will generate a key, store it with zeitgeist-
keyring-helper, fetch the key with zeitgeist-keyring-helper, and finally
it will initialize and use the database. All subsequent accesses will
simply call the zeitgeist-keyring-helper to fetch the key in a
transparent manner.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/787868

Title:
  Encryption of database

Status in Zeitgeist Framework:
  New

Bug description:
  I think that Zeitgeist should encrypt databases in
  ~/.local/share/zeitgeist/* for anti-forensics reasons.

  While someone may happen to use an encrypted disk, Zeitgeist may serve
  as the ultimate accidental spyware to an unsuspecting user. One
  possible mitigation is to randomly generate a reasonable key, tie it
  into the login keychain and then use that key with something like
  http://sqlcipher.net/ rather than straight sqlite.

  In theory, a user will never know that this encryption/decryption is
  happening - no underlying assumptions about the disk need to be made
  to maintain any security guarantees. This should prevent anyone from
  learning the contents of the database without also learning the login
  password. Modern Ubuntu machines disallow non-root ptracing (
  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/Roadmap/KernelHardening#ptrace )
  and if the gnome keyring is locked, an attacker would have a much
  harder time grabbing meaningful Zeitgeist data without interacting
  with the user or bruteforcing the login keychain.