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Windows Vista To Make Dual-Boot A Challenge?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the have-to-raise-a-fuss dept.

mustafap writes "UK tech site The Register is reporting on security guru Bruce Schneier's observation that the disk encryption system to be shipped with Vista, BitLocker, will make dual booting other OSs difficult - you will no longer be able to share data between the two." From the article: "This encryption technology also has the effect of frustrating the exchange of data needed in a dual boot system. 'You could look at BitLocker as anti-Linux because it frustrates dual boot,' Schneier told El Reg. Schneier said Vista will bring forward security improvements, but cautioned that technical advances are less important than improvements in how technology is presented to users."

13 of 442 comments (clear)

  1. Whatever...try fat32 partition by gbrandt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Any body that is dual booting will also know that making a partition formatted fat32 will allow copying of files between os's.

    1. Re:Whatever...try fat32 partition by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Any body that is dual booting will also know that making a partition formatted fat32 will allow copying of files between os's.

      Bitlocker is a whole-volume, hardware based encryption system (as opposed to file-specific techologies, such as Encrypted File System, which have overhead that requires a specific filesystem like NTFS. There is no filesystem specific overhead because it's transparent to the filesystem, and to the applications for that matter) -- there is no reason I am aware of for it to be tied to any specific filesystem, and it should encrypt FAT32 just as capably as NTFS.

      Not only is this functionality optional, and requiring special hardware support, but it is a bonafide feature. The data of the world would be much safer if every laptop swiped, hard drive sold on ebay, and incident of unwanted physical access of machines couldn't give absolute access to every file on the machine.

    2. Re:Whatever...try fat32 partition by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Even perhaps having a bug.

      You know full well it isn't a bug. It's the same exact "feature" that has been shared by all in their OSes for the past 20 years. It's not in Microsoft's interest to make it any easier for users to stray from their ecosystem, so this intentionally designed limitation is not going to change.

  2. No Sign Yet by the+linux+geek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've used every build of Vista or Longhorn ever released/leaked, and so far I have seen absolutely no extra "anti-Linux" default-disk-encryption thing. The bootloader also still works fine with chainloader +1. Since Vista has supposedly been "feature-complete" since build 5308 (now is on 5365), I'm not convinced this is anything but FUD.

  3. News Just In: by ettlz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Encrypting a filesystem prevents arbitrary operating system from accessing it!

    I mean — what the fuck?! — isn't that the whole idea?

  4. Non issue. by klingens · · Score: 5, Informative
    If Schneier, TheRegister and all those other attention w... had looked here before opening their mouths:
    http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/secu rity/bittech.mspx
    4.1 Installation

    As part of Windows Vista, BitLocker is installed automatically during OS install with Enterprise and Ultimate editions5. (Note that it is not automatically turned on.)
  5. It will only be in Enterprise and Ultimate Vista by jfern · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At least, according to Wiki.

    As much as we all love to bash Microsfot, I'm guessing it's an optional feature.

  6. Has everyone gone mad? by Psychotext · · Score: 5, Informative

    I appreciate that it's popular to bash MS (I'm just as guilty) but isn't this getting to be a step too far? They're introducing file system functionality for added security and being ripped apart for it by the same people that scream at them for their lack of security focus? I've had a bit of a read into it, and at least on the surface it seems like a good idea.

    Bitlocker isn't going to be compulsory, and as such it isn't going to affect dual booting in any way shape or form. It's certainly not the sort of thing your average home user would be setting up anyway (IMHO). Seems like Mr Schneier is a good old fashioned troll.

    Some more info on Bitlocker here : http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/libr ary/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx

    --
    People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
    1. Re:Has everyone gone mad? by Tim+C · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I take it you missed the recent story on how Vista's firewall is going to be "crippled" because the default config won't block outgoing connections - just like XP's, just like Mandrake's and RedHat's the last time I set up firewalls on them, just like my hardware firewall in fact.

      Slashdot has long had a strong anti-MS bias. Fine, they've never made a secret of it. Recently however, they've started to allow it to warp the facts, which is not fine.

      Sure, this may well make dual-booting more difficult, in that you won't be able to get at your data. Ever tried getting at data on an NTFS partition with Fedora? ZOMG! Fedora is trying to lock out Windows!

      I've been here a long time, and it's sad to see how the site has declined from a site you could trust, to one that will print almost anything as long as it bashes MS or praises FOSS.

      --
      It's official. Most of you are morons.
  7. We're getting good at FUD too! by dhj · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ok... I've been a linux fan for 10 years or so now. Haven't run anything but linux in about 7 years. But c'mon guys this is FUD.

    First of all, vista won't have this activated by default. Here's how you can turn it on in Vista Beta:

    http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/libr ary/c61f2a12-8ae6-4957-b031-97b4d762cf31.mspx

    And yes it will make any data encrypted in this manner unavailable to another operating system. It does this by using TPM (Trusted Platform Module) in the BIOS and can base the key on the kernel and optionally: just the bios, a user supplied key, or a USB drive supplied key.

    This allows for the option of encrypting/decrypting data from the very start of the boot process. And guess what? It's being implemented in linux too!

    http://lwn.net/Articles/144681/

    BitLocker from windows is just a kernel based drive encryption software that takes advantage of TPMs just like the linux system. If you're concerned about cross platform compatibility then use user space encryption rather than kernel space encryptiong. If you're that concerned about secure keys then don't dual boot! If you love dual booting and don't care about encryption at all, noone is going to beat you up and make you use encryptiong.

    You may remove the tinfoil hat.

    --David

  8. Shame on you by Neon+Aardvark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A company plans to include a very useful encryption tool with it's next OS.

    This is good news in terms of security and privacy, and therefore /. readers will welcome it.

    Oh wait, no they won't, because the company is Microsoft. Microsoft is baaad, therefore everything they do is sinister and evil. You people always manage to find the dark lining to their every silver cloud.

    It's the herd-mentality at work, folks.

    Yawn.

    --
    Azural - instrumentals
  9. Re:And another EU Commision lawsuit in 3... 2... by PsychicX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One slight detail.

    Drive encryption is optional. It's something you may configure while setting up the system for systems carrying sensitive or important data. It's not like a standard Vista install automatically encrypts the entire drive. That would be ludicrous.

    Bruce Schneier may be a brilliant security guy, but like every other person (and company) on the planet, he has an agenda. Don't automatically trust the guy telling you stuff because it's embarassing to the person he's telling you about.

  10. Bitlocker does NOT prevent dual booting by jsm300 · · Score: 5, Informative

    This article appears to be completely uninformed. Bitlocker works on a volume basis, not on an entire harddrive (unless the harddrive only has one volume). In fact, in order to get Bitlocker to work for Vista you MUST have two volumes, one being the OS volume that is encrypted with Bitlocker, and the other is the system volume which cannot be encrypted with bitlocker. Nothing prevents you from having multiple volumes and only enabling Bitlocker for some of the Windows Vista volumes. You can have other volumes/partitions with Linux or any other OS you want. The only issue is that you will not be able to read the Bitlocker protected partitions from Linux. Isn't that kind of obvious? You can still have a unencrypted FAT32 partition for sharing data between Linux and Windows, or an unencrypted NTFS partition for one way sharing between Windows and Linux (write support for NTFS on Linux is still not reliable). As far as recovery, you will not be able to do that with Linux, you will have to do that with Windows. I guess I'm not seeing a real issue here.