this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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Preferably in your brain and maybe partially in a smart card protected by a pin?
Yes, currently I'm using my brain for that and was thinking a security key such as Yubikey with touch requirement + PIN. But at least on Linux there is no support for that, or is it?
Edit: Ha, there actually is - https://mhdez.com/posts/unlocking-encrypted-linux-with-a-yubikey/
AFAIK there is. But even if not, it simulates a keyboard which can input your passphrase. Also modification of the initrd is a matter of providing a bash script or binary to launch which returns the passphrase in the crypttab file and adding it to the correct directory.
From what I read so far, hardware key is just another way to decrypting, not the required. So it's just a convenient method to avoid typing a (long) password and instead just few PIN chars. So, if somebody gets hold of password, can still decrypt the disk even without the hardware key. Not perfect, but still better than only password.