Of Encrypted Hard Drives and "Evil Maids"

Schneier has a blog piece about Joanna Rutkowska's "evil maid" attack, demonstrated earlier this month against TrueCrypt. "The same kind of attack should work against any whole-disk encryption, including PGP Disk and BitLocker. ... [A] likely scenario is that you leave your encrypted computer in your hotel room when you go out to dinner, and the maid sneaks in and installs the hacked bootloader. ... [P]eople who encrypt their hard drives, or partitions on their hard drives, have to realize that the encryption gives them less protection than they probably believe. It protects against someone confiscating or stealing their computer and then trying to get at the data. It does not protect against an attacker who has access to your computer over a period of time during which you use it, too."

Comments

Fine line between security and paranoia

[elrous0]

Seriously, if you're worried about some hacker assassin breaking into your house or office and installing a bootloader, you're either doing something REALLY secretive (in which case the computer probably shouldn't even be on a network to upload any data back in the first place) or you're the kind of person who thinks Obama has your name on an "important persons" list and is coming for your guns. If someone has physical access to your machine and has the skills to install a bootloader, you're pretty much boned anyway, encryption or not (encryption isn't going to stop a simple keylogger). That's nothing new. Fortunately, for the vast vast majority of us, there are very few hacker black operatives who are running around breaking into hotel rooms just so they can get a single Visa number from Bob the dipshit middle manager. Newsflash Bob, YOU'RE NOT THAT IMPORTANT!

Oh, and I love how the article calls the prospect of a ninja hacker hotel maid sneaking a bootloader onto your laptop and then sneaking back into your room later to retrieve the data a "likely scenario." What hotels is this guy staying at anyway?