Mark <mark@coombs.anu.edu.au> writes:
I still don't see why all of the actual encryption couldn't be done in software though...
Me either, apart from TEMPEST issues...
Speed. No software implementation will be able to match a hardware DES chip in total throughput. I have enough trouble dealing with the drive transfer speeds imposed upon PC unix systems with the lame bus, but even this could keep up if I had to run my file access through a software DES system. There are cards out there that can do this, and it doesn't really make sense not to offload this to an external device.
Linux comes with slot in file system modules (as detailed in a letter to Jim) that you can easily adapt to your own uses. Ive been playing around with this idea for a while. Adding a desfs(tm) (me :) to a linux kernel is not going to be that hard I think.. (touch wood).
Yes, the other thing that pushed me to linux (besides the larger user community) was the support for "drop-in" filesystems. jim