Remotely unlocking an encrypted hard disk

11 Comments

1. 2026-01-26 8:18 am

   marc_dimarco

   Nice. I may try it with Wiregruard as I host couple of WG servers. Currently I just use this with Arch Linux and it works like a charm for those remote updates when I cannot be at the console or there is no console (frequent case), but there’s full disk encryption …

   cat /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
   MODULES=(btrfs)
   BINARIES=(/usr/bin/btrfs)
   FILES=()
   HOOKS=(base udev autodetect microcode keyboard keymap modconf block netconf dropbear encryptssh filesystems fsck)
2. 2026-01-26 9:27 am

   Carewolf

   Why at the boot? Just plug a USB device in while the machine is running and the disk open and send the keyboard commands over usb to copy the disk
• 2026-01-26 12:50 pm

  babblo

  How do you propose to insert a USB device remotely? With a robot?
• 2026-01-29 6:06 am

  Carewolf

  The remotely part was only in the osnews headline, not in the quoted challenge. I answered the quoted challenge, because it was the only part that made any sense. Any remote attack has already bypassed disk encryption, it really only affects machines turned off, which can not be remotely reached any way.
3. 2026-01-26 3:39 pm

   kwanbis

   OSNEWS REALTED: A week or so ago something happened and scrolling stoped working on Chrome on Android. Same for Brave. Now it is working again, but the scroling on the PC is broken. If I use my mouse scrolling whell it goes super far wich each move. So bad that I have to go to the scroll bar and move manually for it to work.
• 2026-01-26 4:49 pm

  Drizzt321

  I’ve noticed this too, although it’s when scrolling in the center area. When scrolling on the gray sidebars/background, it scrolls as I’d expect.

  This is Firefox on Debian 13 in KDE Plasma.
• 2026-01-26 6:55 pm

  Alfman verbose=1

  Drizzt321,

  I’ve noticed this too, although it’s when scrolling in the center area. When scrolling on the gray sidebars/background, it scrolls as I’d expect.

  Yes, looking at the code reveals the issue quite quickly…somebody’s added a new scroll handler and the message shows up in the console. Not sure what this was trying to do, multiply scrolling by 30? Why? And using timers to reapply changes every second. Weird stuff. When it’s deleted from the page source scrolling starts working normally again.

  function enableScrollingInline() {
  if (!document.body) {
  setTimeout(enableScrollingInline, 50);
  return;
  }
  …
  // Native scrolling doesn’t work – add optimized forced scroll handler
  document.scrollHandler = function(e) {
  if (e.deltaY !== 0) {
  e.preventDefault();
  e.stopPropagation();
  // Use very high multiplier for fast scrolling (jQuery handler now disabled)
  const scrollMultiplier = 30.0;
  window.scrollBy(0, e.deltaY * scrollMultiplier);
  }
  };

  // Only attach to content container, NOT window (to preserve scrollbar scrolling)
  mainContentContainer.addEventListener(‘wheel’, document.scrollHandler, { passive: false });
  console.log(‘Forced scroll handler enabled with 30x multiplier – jQuery disabled’);
  }
  }, 1000);

  console.log(‘Scroll fix applied – native scrolling enabled’);
  }

  enableScrollingInline();
  window.addEventListener(‘load’, enableScrollingInline);

  I guess this code is trying to compensate for something but it’s clearly making things worse for the browsers I am using.
• 2026-01-26 7:22 pm

  Drizzt321

  Good sleuthing, but weiiiird. No clue why that would want to be added. @Thom?
• 2026-01-27 3:34 am

  Alfman verbose=1

  Drizzt321,

  Good sleuthing, but weiiiird. No clue why that would want to be added

  Users have been reporting that something changed and broke scrolling on android about a week ago. My guess is that somebody is playing around with the site’s CSS theme and unintentionally broke the scrolling on some browsers and they tried to fix it with javascript. Javascript shouldn’t be needed to scroll though, it’s fragile, adds unnecessary bloat. Even if it worked waking up to modify the DOM every second is an energy vampire.

  My suggestion would be to drop this javascript and focus on fixing the original cause of the problem. I didn’t observe the problem others reported on andorid since I rarely browse on my phone. I am not experiencing issues on the desktop nor phone with the javascript removed
• 2026-01-27 2:45 am

  Shiunbird

  Same on Windows Firefox.
• 2026-01-29 6:07 am

  Carewolf

  Yeah, you need to log out otherwise it is broken in the web version.