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What's Missing From File / Disk Encryption?
lockDrive asks: "Every month, we read a news about personal information leak. Most of the time, either a laptop or a hard disk that contains sensitive information is stolen from a government or corporate office, and the data are not encrypted. Recently, Department of Veterans Affairs had lost a laptop which contained confidential information for 26.5 million veterans. The data were not encrypted. There are many products that provide a solution to such a problem. Microsoft Encrypting File System (EFS), which comes with Windows 2000 and later, encrypts data in a file system and seems to have a decent key recovery system in Windows 2003 Server CA. Products like SecureDoc and DriveCrypt encrypt an entire disk. I have tried some of them and they are not that difficult to use. What is holding people who handle sensitive information (government, health-care, insurance ...) back from encrypting their data? Are the products still too hard to use? Are they concerned about performance loss? Are they not convinced with the security gain? Are they just not adopting the technology quickly? Is there anything missing in the technology?"
Time is what is needed. :-D
it will slow people down. maybe long enough to recover the data or somehow make it less useful (change ids, passwords, etc). even good encryption will eventually fail. the best you can do is to make it difficult.
on a positive note, someone suddenly looking for breaking tools might catch some attention. on a negative note, something encrypted tends to be a big red flag that says 'look at me, i was important enough to protect'.
and one final thought: it you look at the care and attention that people pay to to security, it would not surprise me if most encrypted systems would be compromised by user stupidity (social engineering).
eric
I've been looking for an encrypted hard drive controller- something that looks to the OS like a normal disk but every single byte written to the disk is encrypted. The moment the power is pulled the key is lost and needs to re-entered when the system reboots. It would look like a disk error but when the "Non-system or disk error" message comes up you enter the key and the system boots normally.
I would prefer there not be any chance of the OS leaving around un-encrypted information on the swap partition or hacing a back door or any other stupidity. I've seen encrypted controllers but only with 40 bit keys. I'd love to see something with an AES 256 bit key. If nothing is out there I may just have to put together something using an FPGA.
-sirket
Can you stick the drive in any PC running the same OS, supply your password, and get the data? If not, there's one less step before you get stuck trying to read crufty old backup tapes/CDs/etc.
I think you missed the real cause -- the IWNHTM Syndrome.
It Will NeverHappen To Me
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
It's not a technological problem -- everyone in Windows & Linux land should be using Truecrypt or something similar and being smart about how they handle data. Rather it's a social problem.
Without written security policies, nobody knows what they should/can/must not do, and even if they do, they follow the rules inconsistently.
Take a look at Cisco's SAFE, for example. It explicitly says
If you don't know what you have, who gets to access it, and when, what good is a bunch of hardware and software? You might as well hand all your workers CDs of your databases and cross your fingers. Which, possibly, actually happens in some of these cases. Sadly, this sort of stuff is Day 1 material for CCNA and MCSE and other certifications these days, so it pretty much looks like whoever is running the show in these places can't follow or doesn't know standard industry practices. That's gross negligence, IMO, and nothing to do with any sort of technical failings.
How about corrupted data recovery? Say I have a document, and 15 bytes are damaged and unrecoverable. No problem, I still want it because it's important. If it's unencrypted, that is unproblematic. Whatever those 15 bytes were is damaged and I'll have to fix, the rest of it is there. What about the encryption? Can it handle decrypting partially damaged files, or will it fail?
I would love to a see a distro, like ubunto, that would ask me if I wanted to create a small boot parition, and a larger *encrypted* primary parition, which would then install to the encrypted partiton, and finally give me the chance to burn a CD from which to boot (or USB stick if my system supported that, etc.). Then, on boot (either from the HD small boot part, or a read-only CD), I'd enter my password to access the root partition. As it stands, getting this done requires some expertise, too much time for most of us, and lot manipulating of files, partitions, etc.. Make it easy!
Common sense and rigour.
I don't care if your algorithm never exposes a weakness for ten thousand years and your messages are supposedly secret for ten billion. If you keep throwing your scratchpad in the wastebasket and leaving it there, for example, then I'll probably figure out your plaintext.
"The Devil does not know a lot because He's the Devil, He knows a lot because he's old." -- unknown
I'd just like to be able to store 'personal' or 'private' information on a 1GB encrypted flash drive.
One of the major reasons that has stopped me from using encryption, however, is the lack of compadibility for diffrent operating systems.
If I encrypt the drive using AES-256 on linux, I'm unable to read it on Windows. If I encrypt it with one of the Windows tools, I'm unable to read it on linux.
So I'm stuck between only being able to read my information at home on my linux machine, or only on public/windows computers.
Any organization handling truly sensitive data doesn't have the luxury of using third party key management. As soon as you have to manage keys, the difficulty of encrypting data goes way up. For these applications, a six letter password isn't going to cut it. Security has little to nothing to do with encrypting data. You can just as easily lock the data in a safe. If you encrypt the data and lock the key in a safe, what's the difference? There is none. People often equate encrypted with secure and this is rarely, rarely the case.
We had someone at work talk about this...
http://www.truecrypt.org/
Its not a HW controler, but a mount the file system encrypted. It seems like a well thought idea anyway. And available for Linux.
Take a simple linux install disk that uses initrd of your choice and comes with cryptoloop.
Modify the initrd so it asks for a password before setting up the "real" root device on your harddrive.
Burn the install CD with the modified initrd. Install linux using this disk (so it installs onto the now-encrypted hard drive)
In order to use the system, you'll have to insert the install CD and use it as a boot CD everytime. But in this fashion no un-encrypted data is on any of your hard drives. To remove evidence that you can even access it, remove the CD when you're done using the computer, and store it in an inconspicous place.
If you prefer using windows, deal with linux to the point you can install QEMU or VMWare. Install Windows normally in the virtual environment and it is encrypted as well (including the swap file!).
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The really great thing about TrueCrypt, as I see it, is plausible deniability. This means that you can "nest" volumes and only have to account for the outer "envelope" when you are tortured by Homeland Security because you are using cryptography. The short of this: it is impossible to distinguish the "signal" of a nested hidden volume from the "noise" of random bits and such on the device.