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Bitlocker No Real Threat To Decryption?
An anonymous reader writes "The Register is running a story called 'Vista encryption 'no threat' to computer forensics'. The article explains that despite some initial concerns that lawbreakers would benefit from built-in strong encryption, it's unlikely the Bitlocker technology will slow down most digital forensic analysts. What kind of measures does one need to take to make sure no one but yourself has access to your data? Is Bitlocker just good enough (keeping out your siblings) or does it miss the whole purpose of the encryption entirely?" One would hope an international criminal mastermind could do better than the encryption built into Vista.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
They said nothing to see here. Move along...
"One would hope an international criminal mastermind could do better than the encryption built into Vista." I'm sure plenty of criminal masterminds already use PGP or GnuPG. Supposedly even using encryption can be deemed "criminal intent" in Minnesota. So naturally criminals must be using it. Right?
Brain: Are you thinking what im thinking?
!
Pinky: I think so brain, but Vista locked up and we lost all the missle launch keys we stole from the NSA.
Brain: GGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTEEEESSSS
just by knowing its no "real threat to decryption"
There is a way to implement secure backdoors. Like encrypt the encryption key with the public key of NSA and store it on the drive itself. There you go, now only NSA can read your drive.
What kind of measures does one need to take to make sure no one but yourself has access to your data?
Do what works for pirates. Bury it.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Really though, I'd say Bitlocker is probably adequate for most purposes. If you're concerned about siblings, co-workers, rival companies, etc. it will hide your data. If you're trying to hide something from legal authorities, you'd best find another way to hide your data.
is not going to be protected by MS... http://www.truecrypt.org/
~
Source?
Stupid moderators.
This article has little to do with BitLocker; it's just repeating what should be a well-known fact: unless a security mechanism is used perfectly, it is vulnerable. People rarely use security perfectly.
From the article:
Hey, there's a clever idea! I wonder where they thought up that one? I'm glad to see people aren't spending all their time worrying about Vista's DRM...
Breakfast served all day!
Just before leaving the house every day, I perform the following steps:
-----
ME (in Picard's voice):
Computer, establish a security
code for access to all data query
functions.
COMPUTER VOICE:
Enter code.
ME (in Picard's voice speaking at a breakneck speed):
Four, one, three, three, six,
eight, Tango, one, eight, one,
one, seven, one, Charlie, four,
Victor, three... eight, eight,
eight, zero, Foxtrot, six, one,
five, three, three, five, nine,
five, seven, lock.
COMPUTER VOICE:
Security code intact for all
data query functions.
-----
After that, it's just a matter of initiating a cascade force field sequence as I head out the door.
so anything said against Vista will be modded "Insightful" without the barest show of proof? news for nerds, indeed.
The article is long on airy handwaving, "not a problem in the real world" , "Don't worry be happy!" stuff. Specifically, while they minimize the possibility of someone using BitLocker correctly on trusted hardware, just what will law enforcement do when they start running into Thinkpads (with the Trusted Platform chip) combined with suspects smart enough to use a decent length passphrase? Is there a way in? If the crypto is implemented correctly it should be damned near impossible; as hard a nut to crack as the problem of getting homebrew software to run on an unchipped xbox, just as one example of something even the best haxors have tried and failed at for years.
And btw, obviously anyone depending on the fingerprint scanner doesn't understand that protects against a totally different threat.
Democrat delenda est
Technically speaking what you are asking is impossible. If the data exists then it is by definition accessible. Even if it's on an encrypted hard-drive in a safe buried at the bottom of the ocean, the safe can be found and craked open. Even if the encryption is unbreakable people can beat the keys out of you or threaten your family. Until minds can be read, the only safe place for data is in your brain. But even then you are still susceptible to torture, etc.
If you read past the headline, the heart of the article is not about the technological changes in Vista, but the behavior of common criminals. The forensics guys know from past experience that people don't bother to use all of the features available to them. Even if they do, seizing the computer itself (hopefully while it's on and the user is logged in) means they can do whatever the user would do to access the data.
A USB key is a neat trick to keep the wife away from your pr0n collection, but it won't do you much good if the FBI can force you to hand it over.
> so anything said against Vista will be modded "Insightful" without the barest show of proof?
It's a logical conclusion--not only is it "a" logical conclusion but it is the most probable conclusion. The people with the strongest backgrounds in computer security, working for Microsoft, will be associated with other people with the strongest backgrounds in computer security. Those with the strongest backgrounds in computer security are most likely to be associated with governmental agencies, and in possession of the necessary security clearances, which allow them to work there.
Thus, those who know the most deeply buried exploits for Windows Vista (especially the exploits which may even be specific to particular hardware) are in the social circles which are closest to organizations such as the NSA.
It's all very statistical and it makes perfect sense. The only possible defeat would be if Vista had no security exploits and we don't need to cite any links to know that is false.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Lock your hard drive in a safe while you are away. Problem solved.
Just to save everyone the time....
"If you don't use encryption technologies properly, they will not serve it's purpose."
Well, I think the author may have a few points considering that the government itself does not know how to use encryption properly...
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11393 [Security Focus]
Why we'd expect the average Joe to do it right is beyond me.
Even if the crypto chip become widely available the NSA/CSA/ big bro will have pulled some patriot act shenanigans to get a back door put in anyway.
VIVA LA PGP!
Those with the strongest backgrounds in computer security are most likely to be associated with governmental agencies
Alright. I'll bite. What governmental agencies? Looking at the Federal pay scale, I can tell you where they ain't.
There is whole lot of difference between people at the NSA knowing about security *holes* in vista and an intentionally implemented backdoor you know....
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
I suspect that it's no real threat because they do not actually have to decrypt anything. With an all too easy to get warrant they place a device (i.e. keylogger, camera, or other type of spy stuff) and wait patiently for the suspect to type the password once. The toughest pass phrase can't resist spying. That or they seize the physical crypto key if one exists.
load "$",8,1
One would hope an international criminal mastermind could do better than the encryption built into Vista.
Really? Personally, I would hope they write their plans on slips of paper and stash them in a shoe box. I really do not wish any success for criminal masterminds...except maybe Dr. Claw. I really thought Inspector Gadget was obnoxious.
My other computer is a Jacquard loom.
"it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve." (etext)
It was true in 1843; it is true today. Why, exactly, do people continue to be deluded in gambling real money on the belief that some company supplying some cryptographic technology has people in it who are smarter than everybody else in the world?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Change defaults.
qz
> If you're trying to hide something from legal authorities, you'd best find another way to hide your data.
But this is the point of the article and the discussion. Law enforcement and the software vendors who supply them are making a bunch of handwaving "not a problem" noise but this just puts the question onto teh table for discussion, it doesn't even start to answer it.
The question: Is BitLocker safe for really secure work? Which breaks down to smaller questions. Even when used correctly, with a TCPM chip and a good passphrase and good logoff/umount displine is the implementation and design sound? Or is this just a FUD campaign to keep the coppers buying EnCase? Is BitLocker vulnerable to attacks that other encrption solutions would defend against?
Because while, despite the Daily Hate here on Slashdot, America isn't a police state and the innocent have little to fear from their governemt unless they are crimelords, terrorists or that most dreadful scourge, a kiddie porn fiend But that isn't much comfort for the billions of huddled masses yearning to breath free in the unfree parts of the world. PGP was a godsend to political dissidents around the world, is BitLocker a useful tool for them as well or a trojan horse to help despots fill their forced labor camps with the fools who trust it with their secrets?
Democrat delenda est
All of these "BitLocker" vulnerabilities aren't actually BitLocker vulnerabilities, they're full-disk-encryption vulnerabilities. They apply just as much to my FreeBSD GBDE protected partition as they do to BitLocker, there's nothing new or even interesting in this article. (The summary "No Real Threat To Decryption" is misleading, because there is nothing about decryption in there.)
The article says that if the user was using a USB key to unlock the drive, or was in a corporate environment, investigators would be able to get access by taking the USB key or co-operating with the business owners.
It says that if the computer was on they could get access to the disk. That's only if the computer isn't locked of course, and if you were under investigation you would think the criminal would quickly press [Windows key]+L as the police burst in.
Clearly The Register has been doing lots of research to produce this article; they should try and get it published in a crypto journal.
Most importantly they seem to have completely missed the point of drive encryption; it's to protect against theft, not "investigators". Would Microsoft have built the technology into Vista in the hope that more criminals under investigation would buy Vista?
If you're being investigated no drive encryption is going to help; if they want access to your system they can just as easily use hardware keyloggers. They'll have the evidence they want long before they let you know you're being investigated.
If you want a good reason to bash BitLocker how about; it's expensive, and there are free alternatives that are just as good for guarding your data against theft.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I don't speak for MS, but I imagine that the purpose of BitLocker is to protect proprietary data on stolen PCs. Laptops with company spreadsheets, product plans and so forth. I doubt very much that its purpose is to prevent police investigation, rather it is to prevent casual theft.
My recent run of paranoia got me using TrueCrypt (Free and works good!).
I think it makes more and more sense to use a VM, if you're concerned about security. You can restore it to a known safe initial state, and you can encrypt its entire world. It seems like a pretty big advantage... oh, and of course, you can move your secure environment to other host machines. Uh. Which may not be all that secure themselves, but hey. I told you this wasn't easy :)
Normally I'm all for bashing MS, but I have yet to see a great solution for this anywhere. So... if any of what I wrote above is new to you, I'd advise that you not trust your Doomsday Device plans (or, more likely, goat porn) to any OS's convenient built-in crypto.
Want to encrypt your disk securely? :)
Take a look at LUKS.
It now comes standard in the latest Debian Etch installer
Does it have the same problem I've seen with most encryption types:
It totally fails if you know the contents of something that should already be on there that you want to decrypt? So if you have a reference string, and its location, it becomes trivial to compute the key?
I had all my max-secure stuff in a .zip file, renamed and XORed with a command-line character. This was stored on a small partition I'd "remove" from the chain as needed.
Never got caught.
Lemon curry?
So _that's_ why the ??AA are having so much trouble backing up those statistics about unlawfully copied movies/CDs/etc.--the copies have all been buried!
I wasn't aware the individual pay scales for No Such Agency was public knowledge.
...that most computers won't have either the Trusted Computing Module (TCM) chip or the super-duper expensive version(s) of Vista that come with BitLocker. And even if some consumer did have all that, he'd have to figure out how to enable and configure it.
The majority of Windows users stick with the defaults. No barrier? 'Course not, because it won't be heavily used...
"For one thing, in two of its three modes of operation BitLocker requires a cryptographic hardware chip called a Trusted Platform Module and a compatible BIOS. These chips are yet to become widely available much less deployed."
Most boards made by intel in last year have TPMs, and they are enabled by default. Last I knew Intel was Dell's motherboard supplier of choice (that may have changed, I haven't kept track), but it seems there's a fairly reasonable chance that almost any dell (and possibly hp/compaq too) with a Core Solo or better has a TPM and has it enabled.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
The feds will always have access to everyone's pr0n collections. These things (disk encryption) are only really good at keeping petty thieves away from your data. The truly motivated will always break your encryption key.
I'd like to know how Apple's FileVault does in comparison. Is it better, worse, about the same?
The real criminal masterminds use whatever the Feds and the military are using, which we don't know about because it's classified information.
The military probably uses whatever is FIPS-140 certified. At least that's what was being mandated at the DoD contractor I worked for.
One key to rule them all. Brilliant idea. And no one will ever, ever, ever steal that key. And technology will never progress to the point where that key becomes crackable.
And the guarding of the "secure" back door will always be much much better than I could possibly guard the "front door," so it's no problem for my security. And of course I can still implement defense-in-depth with a back door that I can confidently rely on will never open.
Sorry, secure back doors are possible in theory. The difference between theory and practice, of course, is that in theory they are the same, but in practice, they aren't.
pfui. this isn't logic. not even freshman logic. it is a mischievous chain of increasingly tenuous associations that doesn't in the end amount to a damn thing.
if you presented this argument in a classroom you would be stomped down flat.
either show me the backdoor or STFU.
who honestly believe Microsoft didn't provide some backdoor to bitlocker for the NSA, CIA, FBI, IRS, RIAA, MPAA and anyone wlse who can cook up some excuse to claim they need it.
We should do a Slashdot Poll on this one.
> show me the backdoor
If I did then I would be required, by law and my duty to my country, to kill you.
> this isn't logic
Seven steps to know anyone. It's mathematical fact and, given the effects which the demographics have on the math, it is the most probable conclusion.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Seriously, strong encryption doesn't matter that much in the real world. Any encryption that is sufficiently strong just entices decryption by other means.
Seriously, if you are hauled into civil court, the judge will force you revel your password (via a discovery request followed by a contempt order). Same at customs and other various inspection stations ("not decrypting for us, well we'll just confiscate this then").
In criminal court, they can't compel you to decrypt things, but they can tell the jury your HD is encrypted. How is that going to look? In the criminal world, the goal is not to make your data unreadable, but to hide that it exists.
If a criminal is trying to "get to you", it is proven that social engineering is much more effective. And really, criminals don't care about your data, but instead about your identity.
So, who does that leave us with? Co-workers, girlfriends, parents. None of the these people are really MI5. Weak nuisance encryption is more than enough for them.
That pretty much leaves us with industrial espionage. And, come on, you are just not that important.
Pinky never thinks what Brain thinks. It would be more like:
Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Pinky: I think so, Brain, but how are we going to find deep-fried pants at this hour?
Brain: I-- (sigh) just hand read me that encryption key from the screen there.
(Pinky is jumping back and forth and balancing on different pens, he falls backwards and hits the computer. Brain sighs at his own destiny of having to live with such a buffoon. Pinky dusts himself off.)
Brain: Where did you even get all those pens, anyway?
Pinky: Microsoft is giving them away! They sent ten free pens to every household in the world. (Confused) I'm not sure why, maybe because their computers are always breaking... you know, one time I was...
Brain: Nevermind that, Pinky. Just read me the encryption key from the monitor.
Pinky: What, you mean this TV doodad?
Brain: (sigh, sarcastically) Yes, Pinky. From the "TV doodad."
Pinky: Ooook, it says (pause)
Brain: Yes?
Pinky: Well that's what it says. It says (pause)
Brain: It says what, Pinky?
Pinky: Now I just told you what it says Brain, don't make me repeat myself!
Brain: (sighs, walks over to computer) What? No... No... (increasingly dismayed, anxious, ears/eyes droop down) This can't be... (Checks wires behind computer frantically)
Pinky: What's the matter, Brain? Is the TV thing gone cuckoo? I blame Rosie...
Brain: Quiet, you nitwit! I think Vista's frozen up. We've lost the encryption keys!
Pinky: Frozen Vista? Ooooooooooh what flavour is it Brain? Grape-a-melon? I loooove Grape-a-melon...
Brain: (sarcastically) Yes, Pinky, it's Grape-a-melon. (shakes head) Look, you know who's to blame for this, don't you?
Pinky: Ummmm.... The Flying Sausage People from the tea cup in outerspace?
Brain: (sigh) No, Pinky. (dramatically zooms in on his face) BILL GATES! He must've figured out we were trying to take over the world, and he wants it for himself!
Pinky: Gee, Brain, how'd you think he figured that out?
Brain: I don't know. Maybe he has a television and watches the fine Warner Brothers cartoon productions. (Pinky & Brain grin at camera)
(Commercial Break)
(Scene: Pinky and Brain riding the bus)
Pinky: Narf! Brain, where are we going again? Candycane Island?
Brain: (sigh) We're going to Redmond to find Bill Gates to steal his plan to take over the world!
Fat tourist passenger in front of them: That's funny! The wife and I are going to see their fabulous dog park!
Brain: I see. Would you excuse me a moment? (takes a magazine and makes a makeshift "wall" blocking the tourist's face from looking at him)
Pinky: (looking out window) Ooooooh, that's a big building! What's that?
Brain: (not looking) That's Microsoft Campus, and it's more than just a building--
Pinky: But what's that giant towering doodilly with the spinning whatchamacallit on top?
Brain: (looks out window) I told you, Pinky, it's-- Good Lord! Microsoft has built a mind control tower!
(Commerical Break)
(Scene: Bill Gates in Microsoft Mind Control Tower)
Gates: (Nerdish evil laugh) They said I was crazy! All those people that called me a nerd! (adjusts glasses, pocket protector) Well now we'll see who the nerd is!
Ballmer: (foaming at the mouth, shirt sweat-stained, resembling a dog more than a man) YEAH! GET 'EM BILL! GET 'EM! MAKE 'EM PAY! RRRRRRRRRRR!!! (throws chair)
(Gates looks over the control panel. There is a knob to hike the world's pants u
That the parent god modded up proves you can't take anything you read on Slashdot seriously.
Couldn't you say the same thing aout SETI? That the smartest people working there have ties to governmental agencies such as NASA and are secrectly undermining their efforts to conceal the terrifying truth that our alien masters will visit in 2012 to enslave us all? My God, it's full of logic!
Government workers are government workers:
http://www.nsa.gov/CAREERS/faqs_1.cfm
Look down towards the bottom: "New Employee Benefits"
The super crypto geniuses are contractors.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
One major advantage of TrueCrypt: works on both Linux and Windows. Can't remember if there's a Mac version. Nope, there isn't. Here's the TrueCrypt web site.
... and most of all, it's usable: it exists and is easy to use. Because, much as crypto-security fascinates me, I don't want to tinker all the time.
Having researched TrueCrypt and compared the alternatives, I have started using it routinely. It's not so much that I have something to hide, or that what I want kept private requires as strong an encryption as TrueCrypt. It's more than I simply want a convenient way to encrypt something, forget about it, and not have to worry about it later.
My personal financial data resides in a TrueCrypt volume. To lock up all of those files, I just umount the volume, and that's it.
I also wanted to make an offsite backup of our more valuable personal data in case of disaster, such as a fire that burns down our home, destroying the backups stored at home. For example, we have some digital photos with some irreplaceable priceless memories. So I decided to burn them onto DVD and have my relatives, who live out of town, hang onto copies. But relatives can be nosy, and interspersed in the photos could be things I don't want other people to see, from badly taken photos that "make me look fat" to photos of bank statements and legal documents for which we wanted to store a non-paper copy.
So, I created TrueCrypt volumes of the appropriate size to burn to DVD, and then stashed our photos inside. We've got about 4 years' worth of photos (JPEGs) on two (different) DVDs with our relatives in two locations.
I don't want to encrypt something with cheap encryption, and then worry 4 years down the road when someone discovers a flaw in the scheme. You might ask, "What? Are your non-geek relatives going to go about cracking your encryption?" You never know. What if I become someone --let's not say famous, but prominent? Say some sort of social activist fighting for software freedom? Who knows what could happen to my offsite backup DVDs in 4 years --suppose some hired maid accidentally dumps them in the trash, and are noticed by the neighbourhood trash-diving geek? What if some big company or other enemy happens to get their hands on copies and try to use some embarrassing photos to pressure me? I want to be able to rip off my tinfoil hat and laugh, "Don't be ridiculous! That would never happen!"
TrueCrypt gives me that peace of mind. Among its other features is multiple scheme encryption. Are you worried that AES might get cracked next year? Encrypt with AES, and then encrypt the result with Blowfish.[1] Or Twofish first, then CAST5. TrueCrypt offers multiple options, and it does not store the result anywhere. How does it know that you used AES-then-Blowfish encryption? Because it tries all of the schemes one by one. It tries AES alone with the password you gave. Doesn't work. Tries Blowfish alone. Tries about half a dozen other single-encryption schemes. Then it tries the multiple combinations: Blowfish-Serpent, then AES-Blowfish, etc., going down the list until something works. If nothing works, then it concludes that you entered the wrong password.
It's not a perfect solution, and one drawback with TrueCrypt is that I can't use it on my work computer where I don't have administrator rights. But otherwise it has all the advantages I'm looking for: secure, cross-platform, on-the-fly, open source freedom
Just like a screwdriver: when I want to use it, I don't want to have to Google for user manuals. I just want to do what I need with it, and not have to think about it.
---
[1]: Incidentally, the advantage of AES-with-Blowfish is *not* that you can't crack Blowfish even after the AES on your TrueCrypt file is cracked. Once your AES crypto is cracked, the password is known and the same password will be used for the Blowfish decryption. (Remember, TrueCrypt is open source --once the
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
The point is -- if BitLocker is percieved to be vulnerable, it's essentially worthless. For many companies, the prospect of getting the ability to encrypt desktops without additional software can save a ton of money by allowing the firms to lease PCs.
If you have PCs with personal data on them, you must destroy or forensically wipe the hard disks before turning them back in to the leasing company -- which is expensive because it requires manual intervention or reduces the value of the asset.
If you can count on BitLocker to be secure, you don't need to care about what's on the PC.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Good point. I was improvising. Another weakness would be that the encrypted key can be overwritten with random data by a knowledgeable user, etc...
Having just completed a Forensics bootcamp, I was frankly amazed at what the current state of the art practices are in password cracking. Even the smallest commonly used keys would take a Computer for Every Person On the Planet 300,000 years to brute force crack.
Face it, you ain't gonna get there with more horsepower.
But, the guy's a Bronco fan? Index broncos.com and add it to the dictionary. Enter his wife, daughter, marriage date, favorite car, and pets. The dictionary generation software has taken great strides in Making lists of MuffySpot1996 type entries.
Not enough to crack your password? Hmm. Better hope you didn't use it with another program that happened to write it's ram to swap. The forensics tools index EVERY number and word on the drives you enter into evidence. Evidence can be data from your iPod, cellphone, and PDA. It can be from the exchange server and it can be from hotmail.com
Is he Russian? Add the russian dictionary to the search.
So, here's what we have: a Custom dictionary, Russian and English dictionaries, an index of every unique character string captured on all removable and non-removable storage.
That's a lotta chinks in the armor. And Crooks usually aren't that smart.
It was a very enlightening class. During the lab it _easily_ guessed my tier two and three passwords...it didn't get my tier one Passwords, but I didn't enter all my evidence for submission either.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
sorry if i sound stupid, but wouldn't somebody notice this kind of thing? i don't have a clue, pleasde don't flame me :(
Well, after RTFA-ing, I found that that's simply not the case. They are saying basically, that they hope the machine can be seized while turned on, or the key can be obtained by something called Bit Locker Recovery Key (I suppose it's something the manager has) in a corp environment.
The TrueCrypt roadmap page indicates that a Mac OS X version is planned for a future version, along with Vista 32 and 64-bit support. I too am very happy with TrueCrypt. I don't have a Mac at the moment, but I my next computer will probably be one. Here's hoping the Mac port comes soon!
Perhaps you are referring to this?
> There is a way to implement secure backdoors. Like encrypt the encryption key with the public key of NSA and store it on the drive itself. There you go, now only NSA can read your drive.
...
Backdoor nothing, I've long wondered how long until we see a virus that does this, holding the user's data hostage (unless they wire $x to some random account or whatever).
Alternatively, you could use it to extort some company into revealing their key. Say you grabbed a Microsoft public key of interest (one to which the private key would be really useful), then performed the same extortion attack I just described, but blamed Microsoft for it (e.g. "we think you're a pirate, so we locked up all your data!" or whatever). If widespread enough, it would create public pressure for them to reveal their key, or else to offer to decrypt people's data for them. If they reveal the key, it's straightforward. If they simply decrypt things for you, you can use *that* to mount yet another attack on their key by giving them something that wasn't truly "encrypted", but which is a carefully chosen "ciphertext" that will reveal information about their private key when "decrypted"
Evil, no?
Bitlocker uses AES-CBC with some tweakage to deter the usual attacks against full-disk encryption with CBC. The Microsoft paper about encryption options for full-disk encryption is really not bad.
All beside the point, because that's not what the Register article was about, nor was it what the forensics types were talking about. The big point here is *crypto does not solve problems*. Crypto moves problems around. It turns the problem of protecting data into the problem of protecting keys. You hope it's an easier problem, but if you don't protect keys (keep the nerdstick on a chain around your neck, don't have a recovery key, etc.) then it's the same as not protecting your data. Same issue as with PGP: the easy way into PGP-encrypted files is to brute-force the idiotic passphrase that's almost certainly being used to conceal the private key.
If you're willing to throw a little money at it, that's fairly easy to ensure, actually.
First, you use a hardware security module to generate the key pair, configured to refuse to ever give up the private key. Ever. With a good HSM, even if the attacker has complete control of the device odds are slim that he can extract the key.
Second, you put this hardware security module in a secure facility, with appropriate processes in place to ensure that the HSM never leaves the building, under any circumstances, regardless of who wants it to, and that only authorized people with appropriate need have access to the HSM to use it to decrypt disks.
And technology will never progress to the point where that key becomes crackable.Barring (1) a significant mathematical breakthough and (2) a huge improvement in the practicality of large quantum computers, that won't happen. It's easy enough to use a sufficiently large key that Moore's law would have to continue unabated for millions of years to make a brute force search feasible.
And the guarding of the "secure" back door will always be much much better than I could possibly guard the "front door," so it's no problem for my security.Assuming it's not the NSA that wants your data. OTOH, if the NSA wants your data badly enough, they're almost certainly going to get it. Unless you're dead.
The biggest problem with this sort of backdoor, IMO, is that it's too easy for the user to defeat. All the user has to do is to overwrite the copy of the disk encryption key that is encrypted with the NSA key with some random data. The system could be designed to make that difficult, of course, but it will never be impossible, not on a general-purpose computer.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
In other words, Microsoft really hasn't learned much about security over the last 10 years. They still design security systems that are prone to operating in insecurely. This looks like the "Do you want to run this ActiveX control?" dialog all over again.
http://outcampaign.org/
"That's a lotta chinks in the armor. And Crooks usually aren't that smart." Wrong. Caught crook aren't smart. Smart crook won't be caught because they will ask a specialist (for big money) to help them cover their vulnerabilities. And since the knowledge about forensic does not seem to be a secret you get shot by a firing squad if you reveal it, I am sure a lot of people knows about what you described. Alternatively wait 20 years when the current gen which is immersed in computer, vulnerabilities and stories of crook getting caught by such stuff , and the average crook will be aaware of the problem. Do not underestimate crook, they are as dumb or as intelligent as your average persons. And those not caught and certainly more than the average.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
In essence, the argument is that since the encryption functionality in windows Vista is much too difficult to use properly, hardly any crooks will be able to. Wow, that makes me feel very safe :-)
Jan
Of course, if you're American, you don't have to worry as the NSA is not chartered for domestic intelligence.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
wasn't there some back door in the early win95 days of which supposedly the NSA held the keys?
I wouldn't be surprised if such a back door exists in bitlocker.
Which doesn't, in practice, prevent them from doing surveillance of Americans.
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Smart crooks sell Vista
Break the code. There's boobies in there somewhere.
This way the terrorists/law enforcement agents who captured you and forced you to give up your first volume key will not stop at that, they will simply keep torturing you until they get the key they need or you die.
/mnt/secret/suparsecret/plan-to-take-over-the-worl d.odt or a .bash_history that shows that you've done a 'cd /mnt/secret/suparsecret'
Plausible deniability doesn't work if the opponent knows that you are trying to use it.
It's even worse when you factor in various clues on your machine that show that the hidden disk contains data that you have used.
The clues could be as simple as an OOo history that shows that you have edited
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][
Yes, but it uses CBC mode, which means that block N+1 is obtained by XOR'ing some intermediate data with block N, thus a change in the Nth block will propagate to N+1, N+2, etc. Now TrueCrypt uses a different mode, which is more secure, but the principle is the same.
Anyway, regardless of that, the problem is still handled, and a bit-flip will only affect the current sector of the storage device, but not all the ones that follow it. I don't know the low-level details though.
The saddest poem
If you don't, I guess TrueCrypt could be a better choice here as it doesn't rely on hardware, but is software based.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
It's a logical conclusion
A "conclusion" without any factual basis?
Thus, those who know the most deeply buried exploits for Windows Vista (especially the exploits which may even be specific to particular hardware) are in the social circles which are closest to organizations such as the NSA.
Why would a developer "know exploits" without trying to patch them? Just because of being evil, while risking a huge scandal for Microsoft? You see, it's here your "logical conclusion" fails.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Then don't store the NSA key on accessible parts of the disk itself. Store it in a servo track, or on a chip on the disk controller.
If I did then I would be required, by law and my duty to my country, to kill you.
I assume you don't live in the USA? Which country have such laws?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Though i'm a little dubious about any chain letter i'm glad this advice is in there, if you are given the ability to use a long password then IMO song lyrics are easy to remember but hard to guess. especially that one eternally chisseled into your brain from the record your grandma used to play when you were 6
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
It is true encryption is used to protect confidentiality and also [possibly] true this implementation is deficient.
However...
One reason for its use - even in a weak state - is to remove plausible denials.
If I always weakly encrypt an item [and always protect it properly.....] and then at some later stage you show you have access to it that implies that you deliberately accessed it. You had to make a positive action to get to it. You cannot claim that you "accidentally" stumbled on it or that it was published.
Passwording some activities (even with weak passwords) serves a similar purpose.
In both cases the protection is not against determined attackers, rather against accidental leaks.
Thats the only thing MS *could* say. Imagine them responding with the likely more truthful:
"um... yes. We and the cops can peruse your files anytime we want.
But we promise not to. Honest."
Apparently they've started using Caesar Cipher, maybe they thought the feds had broken ROT-13?
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
And all the pieces fall into place...
Ever wondered what cretin was responsible for making you hold the power button in for about 10 seconds before the computer will turn off and why they did it? Now we know - the time betwen your door being knocked down and you knocking the computer off has a confortable 10 seconds (excluding reaction time) for you to be stopped built in...
Unless you hit reboot and then power - then it'll go down immediately. The fascists are foiled again!
FGD 135
Or was it a deliberate endorsement of the world of extreme crime?
I have no idea where the poster lives, but you seem to live in a country without a sense of humour.
The indiscriminate use of vulgar language is the linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker
Doesn't matter. If the OS generates the value and sends it to the disk, a hacked version of the OS can send different data instead, regardless of where it's stored.
That could, of course, be fixed by moving all of the encryption to the drive itself (or perhaps to the drive controller), but that's a completely different architecture than what we're talking about here.
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I was trying to think of a good analogy to bitlocker and I came up with this.
Imagine you had a locksmith out to your house to instal what seems to ben described as the "perfect lock", that no thief can pick or break through. A week after the new locks are in, you read an article in the paper of what your local locksmith has been doing. He has made two copies of the keys. He gave one to your local police department and kept the other for himself.
Who would stand for this? I don't care WHAT his motivations were. I paid for privacy and I did not get it.
I feel a lot safer from abuse of privacy laws when there is a lock on my door. At least that way if someone decides to snoop without a warrant I have a chance of finding out about it.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The encryption might be AES etc, but the problem is Windows passwords. You can download a livecd (ophcrack) which will crack them in under 10 minutes. Once you know the Windows password, you can log on as the person you are investigating, and access all their stuff.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
... I don't notice the overhead for encrypting the whole user partition and thanks to pam_mount I don't even have to type in a second password.
...
I'm almost depressed that my pc never gets confiscated
By the poster's choice of works, One would think they were rooting for the bad guys.
Simply edit the bitlocker.conf file and make the following change:
Change the field:
ENCRYPT_KEY: ROT13
to
ENCRYPT_KEY: ROT12
[Insert pithy quote here]
Unless you hit reboot and then power - then it'll go down immediately. The fascists are foiled again!
If you're not doing full disk encryption, you're probably better off letting it finish rather than leave temp and swap files all over the place. If you are, you're pretty much done at the "reboot" step.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The grandparent comment was indeed moderated "Insightful" ... for a few minutes. If you had given the mods a little while, you would notice it is now -1 Troll where it belongs.
Actually, I was kind of hoping the GP was being sarcastic.
Where possible, Vista's BitLocker uses a Trusted Platform Module to encrypt and decrypt data to and from the disk. The article was light on details (needless to say; it's The Register), but if this hypothetical cryptographic back door were implemented in the TPM rather than in the OS, there wouldn't be much the end user could do to get around it.
http://www.google.com/search?q=nsakey
Which is just one of the reasons to avoid TPM and use a system you actually own rather than one you serve...
*starts singing* You have 10 million keys... and all you need is a knife... Just a little bit ironic....
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
IAAL; US-centric analysis follows.
P .pdf
http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/064399.
In this recent case from the 4th circuit, a spouse consented to having a shared computer seized. The husband had a passwd-protected account on his computer. The forensics guy bypassed that, accessed the files directly on a ghosted drive, and found child pr0n.
His defense? Reasonable expectation of privacy, no warrant, no consent = 4th amendment violation. The government claimed that "apparent authority" existed through the wife, and the 4th circuit allowed the pr0n as evidence.
But. Even with a modest amount of encryption, it becomes a *lot* harder for the gov't to make an "apparent authority" argument with a straight face. If it's transparent for the user to implement, relying on the consent of someone other than the accused will become a lot harder. This has real-world implications.
This says nothing about forensic password breaking or brute force attacks. But to analogize to your front door, a locksmith or battering ram is a far cry from a consent-based search. Expect defense lawyers to make the same argument with respect to files protected with Bitlocker.
IANACryptographer, but ISTR that encrypting something twice can be less secure than either of the two methods. Of course an attacker might have to know you did that. At any rate, you might not want to use multiple encryption without the advice of a professional cryptographer.
...is what you're looking for. You pelt the guy who knows the password with a rubber hose until he hands it over.
That's really hard to defeat, but a panic button to wipe the keyfile (and thus destroy the data) might work.
the linked article says about the same for cryptography. Basically the bad guys don't understand the technology well enough or they are not careful enough. Vista's bitlocker does not help the person who is knowable and careful because he is already using unbreakable cryptography.
But what self respecting paranoid tin foil hat geek is going to have anything less than full disc encryption. The shame would be too much to bear.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=118242&cid=999 4109
I guess you slept through that whole "Patriot Act" thing?
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Security through obscurity works just fine. .dlls to
Just hide your pron in an encrypted rar file. Then change the extension to *.dll (obviosly changing the * to something worthwhile)
Good luck sorting through the
**
** "@#$# You're not MY son..."
** Mom? What the? How did you find that?
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
However, I would argue that since 99% of people will need to buy a new high-end machine to run Vista, the added expense of those people buying an encryption processor is simply not significant in comparison to the net cost. In consequence, the design constraints should not be to what can be done in software alone, but what can be done within a reasonable added cost per unit. If anything, the hardware manufacturers should love that, because it forces the other 1% to buy new machines as well. It's no skin off their teeth, as people WILL buy the machines as the users are locked into that solution. The users have no effective choice.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Windows+r , shutdown -s -f -t 01
.) but I leave it mounted.
/.er) there's just no need for anything like this.
I bet I could get that off while the police are shouting "SEARCH WARRANT". Can't be aborted either since no applications (like shutdown -a) can initialize while windows is shutting down.
OTOH, my setup isn't very secure. I set up a TrueCrypt AES/BLOWFISH drive (using a file, not a partition) and moved some "sensitive" things on there (frequent flyer #s, finance records, etc. .
For the average user (not the average
Where possible, Vista's BitLocker uses a Trusted Platform Module to encrypt and decrypt data to and from the disk. The article was light on details (needless to say; it's The Register), but if this hypothetical cryptographic back door were implemented in the TPM rather than in the OS, there wouldn't be much the end user could do to get around it.
The ability of a TPM to limit what the user can do is highly overrated.
In this case, the only way the TPM could even try to limit the attack is by binding the user disk decryption keys to an unpatched version of the OS so that hopefully the user can't alter what the system does while it's running, and can't understand any of the disk contents when booted under some other OS -- and therefore can't find the NSA-encrypted key to overwrite it. This in turn requires that the OS to be perfectly secure, with no exploitable defects that allow a running system to be patched. Oh, and it also requires that the system not allow the use of debuggers or other tools to extract the disk encryption key from memory so that the user/attacker can boot the system with another OS and decrypt the disk anyway.
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I'm sure it is considered in conjunction with other activities. Like if you're otherwise suspected of dealing drugs, use of encryption is "evidence" that you were up to something. Not that it is any more solid, but at least it isn't saying that encrytion, in and of itself, is illegal.
I think the reason people are unhappy with the opinion is because it might cause people to not use, or otherwise discourage the adoption of, encryption, for fear that it would "look bad" if they ever got in trouble.
E.g., an example that might be closer to most people's hearts would be an IRS audit. Suppose you get audited, and honestly haven't done anything wrong, but get stuck trying to clear your name (because this is how the IRS works: you need to demonstrate to them that you're legit). I could easily see situations where people would be afraid that if their computer was seized and GPG was found, that it would be used as evidence that they were "hiding something" regardless of what was actually going on. So instead, they just begin to fear the tools.
This is a self-fulfilling prophesy: as more people fear encryption tools, less innocent people will keep them around, and they'll become more and more the domain of people with something to hide. Then they gain more of a reputation, furthering the cycle.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
So far the AV companies have been successful in defeating the ones released and getting the key but the attackers are getting better with their crypto and it's just a matter of time before somethnig REALLY nasty comes out that cannot be so easily defeated. For "ransome" they have been insisting on using Egold accounts apparently but these accounts get shutdown pretty quickly.
Surprised no one else rememebred this and pointed it out. Here's the top hit from Google that even has the password for one of them from an AV company... http://www.scambusters.org/ransomware.html/
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I think it secure physical access to our computer and isolate data files in a transferable medium. We can use zipper application to compress and lock data files or use open source system to create data files.
I like that bondage video you made, if you are wrath0fb0b@aol.com.