I use a headless server connected to nothing but an ethernet cable in my basement, and I’d prefer to allow the thing to boot by itself and start up without me needing to unlock the disk encryption every single time I do an update or power back on. Its a Dell 9500t NUC that I’m using it as a server and am wondering whether its possible to encrypt everything still.
I do generally use docker containers, so could I potentially encrypt just the containers themselves, assuming I’m worried about a smash and grab rather than someone keeping the machine powered up and reading my ram?
If you have TPM2 support on the motherboard it can be used to unlock LUKS encryption but has the following known vulnerability.
https://oddlama.org/blog/bypassing-disk-encryption-with-tpm2-unlock/
The issue I see with TPM is that it will always unlock the drive as long as it is connected to the same motherboard. It means you have to trust all the services you run to be correctly secured. Like there is little reason to encrypt your hard drive in this way if later you have a samba share open without any password.