May I suggest that further discussion of this issue be directed to R-Devel.
-- Bert Gunter Genentech Non-Clinical Statistics South San Francisco, CA "The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning process." - George E. P. Box > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Marc > Schwartz (via MN) > Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2005 2:56 PM > To: Roger D. Peng; Na Li > Cc: r-help@stat.math.ethz.ch; Duncan Temple Lang > Subject: Re: [R] encrypted RData file? > > On Thu, 2005-10-27 at 16:15 -0500, Na Li wrote: > > On 27 Oct 2005, Duncan Temple Lang wrote: > > > > > Yes, it is of interest and was sitting on my todo list at > > > some time. If you want to go ahead and provide code to do it, > > > that would be terrific. There are other areas where encryption > > > would be good to have, so a general mechanism would be nice. > > > > > > D. > > > > > > Na Li wrote: > > > > Hi, I wonder if there is interest/intention to allow > for encrypted .RData > > > > files? One can certainly do that outside R manually > but that will leave a > > > > decrypted RData file somewhere which one has to > remember to delete. > > > > > > > > I was hoping someone has already done it. ;-( > > > > One possibility is to implement an interface package to > gpgme library which > > itself is an interface to GnuPG. > > > > But I'm not sure how the input of passphrase can be handled > without using > > clear text. > > > > Michael > > Seems to me that a better option would be to encrypt the full > partition > such that (unless you write the files to a non-encrypted partition) > these issues are transparent. This would include the use of save(), > save.image() and write() type functions to save what was an encrypted > dataset/object to a unencrypted file. > > Of course, you would also have to encrypt the swap and tmp partitions > (as appropriate) for similar reasons. > > On Linuxen/Unixen, full encryption of partitions is available via > loopback devices and other mechanisms and some distros have this > available as a built-in option. I believe that the FC folks > finally have > this on their list of functional additions for FC5. Windows of course > can do something similar. > > The other consideration here, is that if R Core builds in some form of > encryption, there is the potential for import/export restrictions on > such technology since R is available via international CRAN > mirrors. It > may be best to provide for a plug-in "encryption black box" > of sorts, so > that folks can use a particular encryption schema that meets various > legal/regulatory requirements. > > Of course, simply encrypting the file or even a complete partition has > to be considered within a larger security strategy (ie. network > security, physical access control, etc.) that meets a particular > functional requirement (such as HIPAA here in the U.S.) > > HTH, > > Marc Schwartz > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > ______________________________________________ R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html