Glossary

AES

Advanced Encryption Standard, a strong, well-regarded encryption algorithm chosen by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology

asset

the data being protected by encryption—either a disk, partition, or a file

encryption

a mathematical means of scrambling data so that it's unintelligible unless decrypted using a specific key

key

the small piece of data necessary to make encrypted data intelligible

keychain

the physical medium (such as a USB flash drive) used to hold the encryption key (and possibly the beginning of the boot process)

loopback device

a Linux block device which appears to store data (by using another device)

loop-AES

software written by Jari Ruusu that implements the AES algorithm using a loopback device

plausible deniability

a means to avoid being coerced into decrypting one's own data for an attacker

USB flash drive

a small electronic device containing a memory chip and a USB interface