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Full Disk Encryption Hard For Law Enforcement To Crack

Posted by timothy on from the you-say-problem-I-say-potato dept.

If you'd rather keep your data private, take heart: disk encryption is a lot harder to break than techno-thriller movies and TV shows make it out to be, to the chagrin of some branches of law enforcement. MrSeb writes with word of a paper titled "The growing impact of full disk encryption on digital forensics" [abstract here to paywalled article] that illustrates just how difficult it is. According to the paper, co-authored by a member of US-CERT, "[T]here are three main problems with full disk encryption (FDE): First, evidence-gathering goons can turn off the computer (for transportation) without realizing it's encrypted, and thus can't get back at the data (unless the arrestee gives up his password, which he doesn't have to do); second, if the analysis team doesn't know that the disk is encrypted, it can waste hours trying to read something that's ultimately unreadable; and finally, in the case of hardware-level disk encryption, tampering with the device can trigger self-destruction of the data. The paper does go on to suggest some ways to ameliorate these issues, but ultimately the researchers aren't hopeful: 'Research is needed to develop new techniques and technology for breaking or bypassing full disk encryption.'"

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  1. Re:obligatory by Sollord · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    I always find it funny that every single time a protestor is hurt not what what really happens it's ALWAYS the polices fault it's kinda absurd how these ass hats can never be in the wrong it's always big bad police officer. Sure pepper spraying a the dumb ass in the face with a riot grade can a pepper pray is overkill and pretty bad but personally I'm not stupid enough to push into a wall of riot police cause I know it will end badly for my dumb ass then again when I'm protesting I do it peacefully and try not to aggravate the police or the local residents by being a general loud annoy nuisance who insists on camping out beating drums and shitting in parks of and raping each other.

    Mod me down for not supporting OccupyFAIL 100% even if some of there goals are reasonable they're coming off as spoiled self centered assholes to a large part of the country and ruining there broader support