TrueCrypt 6.0 Released 448
ruphus13 writes "While most of the US was celebrating Independence Day, the true fellow geeks over at TrueCrypt released version 6.0 of TrueCrypt over the long weekend. The new version touts two major upgrades. 'First, TrueCrypt now performs parallel encryption and decryption operations on multi-core systems, giving you a phenomenal speedup if you have more than one processor available. Second, it now has the ability to hide an entire operating system, so even if you're forced to reveal your pre-boot password to an adversary, you can give them one that boots into a plausible decoy operating system, with your hidden operating system remaining completely undetectable.' The software has been released under the 'TrueCrypt License,' which is not OSI approved."
first (Score:5, Funny)
svefg cbfg
Re:first (Score:4, Informative)
Re:first (Score:5, Informative)
Replacement cipher.
Translation table:
b o
c p
e r
f s
g t
i v
More filesystems (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I hope that it now supports more filesystems, because mucking about with FAT on MacOS X didn't appeal to me last time.
Re:More filesystems (Score:5, Informative)
It still only creates FAT file systems, but you can reformat to whatever you want afterwards. I tried it with both HFS+ and ZFS and it seemed to work fine.
Other filesystems could expose hidden volumes (Score:2, Informative)
See my comment here:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=606473&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&no_d2=1&pid=24097371#24097539 [slashdot.org]
Re:More filesystems (Score:4, Informative)
Or you can create your own filesystem? I don't know how it works on the mac, but on windows & linux truecrypt just creates an encrypted disk which you can format with any filesystem you like. Just create the container file filesystem type 'none' and format it yourself.
That might betray the presence of a hidden volume (Score:5, Interesting)
- depending upon the file system.
For instance, if you used ext3 then mkfs.ext3 is going to put backup super blocks all over your disk. If you then setup a hidden volume later on, some of those backup super blocks are going to get over written. An attacker - to whom you've been forced to reveal your outer volume password - could easily discover that the backup super blocks aren't the same as the real super block and deduce that you're using a hidden volume that you didn't tell them about. You could, when formating, tell mkfs.ext3 not to use any backup super blocks - but that also might look a bit suspicious. Just food for thought.
Re:That might betray the presence of a hidden volu (Score:5, Insightful)
Since I didn't understand anything you just said, and I'm a C# Programmer who has Ubuntu installed on a few machines, I highly doubt the $10/hour lunk at the airport is going to notice...
Re:That might betray the presence of a hidden volu (Score:4, Funny)
As a Perl-Fu artist who has been living in a world of *nix for the past 12yrs. Let me just say that seeing someone use Ubuntu doesn't clue newb to me.
On the contrary, Ubuntu is the only system I have seen that provides functional GUI interfaces that don't cause me to have to jump through hoops to do any sort of advanced manual configuration.
I'm all for power, but someone who chooses Slack or regular Debian over Ubuntu is probably the type who likes hot wax poured on their balls.
Re:That might betray the presence of a hidden volu (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More filesystems (Score:5, Funny)
And mucking about with Reiser[FS] doesn't seem to appeal to anyone right now.
Yeah, but if you're already in trouble, you could make a deal by showing them where you hid the filesystem.
Re:More filesystems (Score:4, Funny)
Tumbleweed will be here all night.
All too true...
Local admin rights on Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is described in full here [truecrypt.org]:
Full release notes can be found here [truecrypt.org].
Re:Local admin rights on Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
You should copy the files that you don't mind exposing, to the unencrypted partition of the USB key or a different no crypto USB drive.
Re:Local admin rights on Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't mind exposing your secrets to a machine you don't have control over (and thus should not trust)? I don't recommend it.
You should copy the files that you don't mind exposing, to the unencrypted partition of the USB key or a different no crypto USB drive.
Obviously his specific use for truecrypt is to protect data in transit, should he lose the USB drive.
I think that's a very common scenario.
Your 'solution' completely negates the value of that use of truecrypt.
Low powered PC (Score:4, Interesting)
A not very powerfull small factor PC (some subnotebook barely good enough to run Linux - no need for the latest über-UMPC able to withstand Vista), with which to decrypt the content on arrival seems to be the only current solution.
At least, as an over-powerful laptop isn't needed, at least this isn't very expensive.
Also, has TrueCrypt been ported to PDAs ?
A PDA running TrueCrypt and dual SD+USB hybrids cards (Sandisk and OCZ produce such beasts) seems another even cheaper solution.
If the data can't be decrypted on the target machine when plugged with the card's USB connector, then plug it into the SD port of the PDA and decrypt data from there.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I would say "not well versed on PDA software installation" is a major understatement. You manage to confuse yourself by using the ambiguous "Win-bas
WindowsCE != WindowsXP but Linux: PDA ~PC (Score:5, Informative)
Would this even be necessary? I can install and run Truecrypt off of a USB Thumb drive or an SD card on a Win or Lin based PC.
Yes it's necessary, because currently in Windows there's no way to run TrueCrypt unless you have admin privilege on the target machine.
The original parent wanted to use TrueCrypt to secure data before transporting them (so the loss of the USB key isn't a critical leak) and then being able to retrieve the data from the USB key once arrived at the destination, EVEN if he doesn't have admin access on the machine on which said key is plugged (and thus can't install TrueCrypt from the key).
If you use a Windows PC to install the Win version of Trucrypt, and then plug the SD card into a Win-based PDA, would it not function normally?
No. Won't work. The only thing that "Windows CE" and "Windows XP" have in common is having the word "Windows" appearing in their names. As other have pointed out both don't even run on the same architecture (x86, AMD64 and Itanium for WinXP ; ARM, MIPS and SuperH for WinCE).
So :
- either you run the usual TrueCrypt on a portable device that runs Windows *XP* (or Linux or BSD or Mac) - this was my first suggestion, anything cheap like an Asus EEE PC or an OLPC is OK.
- or you use a PDA running Windows CE (or Palm OS, or Symbian, or RIM) and use a TrueCrypt version that was adapted for the differences and recompiled for the processor.
That was my second suggestion : if there exist a version of TrueCrypt which works on PDA, then the PDA could be used to do the decryption (but stock WinXP software can't run on WinCE).
Linux is an exception : the Linux running on PDAs (Sharp Zaurus, Nokia Maemo, Trolltech GreenPhone, OpenMoko/FIC NeoRunner, etc...) is much closer to the full Linux running on desktop.
Usually the graphic interface is different (often the PDAs don't have X-Windows but use special purpose GUIs) but the system are POSIX compliant and any console software usually run as-is after being simply recompiled from source (because the processors are still different and the binaries are different - but the source is the same for console applications).
So that's the exception to the rule.
Note: That also true for a lot of different Linux enabled appliace (modem/routers, file servers, etc.) - although lots of them have very limited resource which put a hard top at what you can manage to get run.
Also, Apple is touting that their desktops' Mac OS X and the iPhone and iPodTouch's OS X are similarly very related, and some developers (like Epocrates [epocrates.com] who are making medial PDA software) have mentioned that porting their application to the portable OS X was a matter of couple of days.
On the other hand, I haven't heard the iPhone / iPodTouch having a POSIX-compatible console environment (still hearing that the current SDK imposes limits on what can be done), so I don't know if getting a console application to work on those platforms is a simple matter of recompile.
Re:Local admin rights on Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't mind exposing your secrets to a machine you don't have control over (and thus should not trust)? I don't recommend it.
I'm not the OP, but this is being sillily unreasonable.
For instance, I don't have admin rights on the computer in my office. So maybe I don't want to trust this computer entirely. But if I'm walking back and forth with my USB key most days, the major threat is me leaving the key sitting on the bus seat or something like that, not information being stolen while I'm on the work computer.
It's not like just because you don't control a computer you don't trust it at all, or that just because something is in a TrueCrypt volume it's extremely sensitive.
Re:Local admin rights on Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance, I don't have admin rights on the computer in my office. So maybe I don't want to trust this computer entirely.
I do have admin rights to my computer at the office, but I don't trust it 100%. Why? Because any network admin in the company also has admin rights on it. And of course it was not installed by me, and runs some of their custom stuff...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I had to say that, but in reality I suppose I work at too small a company to really comment.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
By the way one useful feature of truecrypt on windows is "mount volumes as removable drives". Windows by default creates admin shares (C$, D$ and so on) for each fixed drive. So a network admin can just connect to \\myip\D$ to take a look at my D: drive. If I mount my truecrypt volume as, let's say E:, an E$ share is automatically created and is accessible for any user (domain or local) with admin access to my machine. If I mount my TC volume as r
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
but let's not make it obvious with a new share that an additional volume is mounted.
You could give this this regkey value [windowsnetworking.com] a try and see if it takes care of your concern. Supposedly it prevents Windows from automatically creating those shares.
Re:Local admin rights on Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not the OP, but this is being sillily unreasonable.
Not necessarily. Do you consider your data safe in the hands of everyone who has admin rights to the machine? Do they keep the machine patched and secured to a level appropriate for your secrets?
The answers to these questions depend on your threat model.
Re:Local admin rights on Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Local admin rights on Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Any other coders have time to update these projects? I know I don't, but it would be a great service to the OSS community if someone could.
Re:Local admin rights on Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
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I work as a consultant and often use Truecrypt on my USB key in traveller mode on sites where I work. The top thing on my wishlist is to be able to run/install Truecrypt on a Windows machine without admin rights.
I'm surprised no one has come up with a stand-alone gui 'archive utility' for truecrypt volumes that works like winzip and the like - just treat the encrypted volume as one big archive file. It would probably have to be limited to FAT filesystems, but I suppose that would be OK for most USB applications.
Re:Local admin rights on Windows (Score:4, Informative)
I think this fits the bill.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/files/TCExplorer.aspx [codeproject.com]
Re:Local admin rights on Windows (Score:5, Informative)
I work as a consultant and often use Truecrypt on my USB key in traveller mode on sites where I work. The top thing on my wishlist is to be able to run/install Truecrypt on a Windows machine without admin rights.
The issue is described in full here [truecrypt.org]:
Full release notes can be found here [truecrypt.org].
You dont need Admin rights with TCexplorer
Ideal for USB key
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/files/TCExplorer.aspx
Re: (Score:2)
I think you hit the nail on the head with your link to TCexplorer. Just what I was looking for indeed:
"A portable software to import, export, delete, rename, view, edit and execute files in TrueCrypt containers without requiring administrative privileges."
Would be even better if a similar tool was integrated into Truecrypt natively, but until that happens I will try this tool.
Only works if it's default install (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise users get exposed to "rubberhose cryptography".
Basically if all users even Joe Sixpack get an encrypted partition by default, then people using crypto will be safe - they have plausible deniability.
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, but Truecrypt has a defence against that. It is called "hidden volumes". Basically, you create a container, use it for porn or financial records (something that you have a legitimate reason to want to hide, from the wife or identities thieves for example), something that you access often. Then you create a hidden volume that is put at the end of that volume, which to access requires a second password.
There is no way of knowing if that second hidden volume exists unless you have both passwords.
If you access the first volume without both passwords, then you can just wipe over whatever information you have stored in the hidden volume.
Oh yeah, I love TrueCrypt. It's groovy.
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:5, Funny)
;) That is to say that you carelessly watch and upload too much porn without both password and you loose all those important TPS reports....
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a clue.
Does Joe Sixpack's computer come with Truecrypt? Does it come with a truecrypt container preinstalled?
The answer is NO.
So if the wrong people find Truecrypt on your computer guess what happens to you. If you say "Nothing" well: "Wrong answer!". They may give up after a few days of giving you the treatment, but it still means you get the treatment.
Whereas if everybody had truecrypt AND an encrypted partition, they could a) try to waterboard everyone, b) wait till they have more evidence.
And that is why I reported this bug/feature request: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/148440 [launchpad.net]
Encryption must appear to be in _use_ by default by all users, then you get safety in numbers. When even your grandma using Ubuntu has a crypto partition, things are better for the people actually using it.
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:4, Insightful)
" Have crypto tools installed by default (if the user does not select the "use of encryption is illegal in my country" checkbox)."
to
" Have crypto tools installed by default (if the user does not select the "don't install encryption" checkbox)."
If the UK courts are going to jail your grandma just because she has an Ubuntu install with a container she has no key too, then I think grandma is living in the wrong country - in the old days the UK courts had the "Reasonable Man" thing, maybe now things have changed.
I see it more as a bug in the UK law than a bug in my proposal.
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:5, Informative)
Think you totally missed the point.
You put plausible data into the encrypted volume, when they ask for your password you give it up, they access the encrypted volume and see you got porn/financial stuff/what nots you don't want others to see. What they can't see is the fact that there is another volume hidden inside this, which there is no way of knowing unless you got the second password. Waterboarding the person makes no sense since he has already given up the password giving you access to the "entire" volume.
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:5, Interesting)
Already a Mr Chris Jones has an issue with my proposal because he seems to think that the UK government would waterboard users in the UK if Ubuntu has a default encrypted partition they might not have a key to.
If Chris Jones is right that the UK Government would do such a thing, then they would be far more likely to waterboard you for voluntarily installing truecrypt, voluntarily creating a encrypted volume (or two) AND not handing over "all" passwords. Even if you don't even have a hidden volume.
If you have a Government willing to mistreat people for using a distro that does what I propose, they would definitely mistreat people who use Truecrypt.
So my proposal makes the most sense.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but Truecrypt has a defence against that. It is called "hidden volumes".
Last I heard, you could only have one hidden volume. That significantly reduces plausible deniability, if you are interrogated they can rubber-hose you until give it up and then your interrogators will know they got it all.
Has that changed? Does truecrypt support unlimited hidden volumes now?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I never heard that. Reading through the documentation, it appears that any TrueCrypt volume can contain one hidden volume. Which means that your hidden volume can itself contain another hidden volume, and that can contain yet another.
If you think your adversary will torture you a seco
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"There is no way of knowing if that second hidden volume exists unless you have both passwords."
Plausible deniability is not really working here, since it is one of TrueCrypt's main features, so if one has TC installed then it's pretty obvious he wants to hide something.
If one installs TC by choice then he surely doesn't do it just to have it eat up some unused harddisk space.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I have porn in one, pics of the GF in another,
Aren't those one in the same?
Thankfully, most people are careless with their homemade pr0n. I mean, uh, nevermind....
Re: (Score:2)
That is not really a solution for most. I suppose its great if you want to hide some criminal activity like you bookie operation you are running, but most people like me the only thing we do want to protect are old tax records, other financials, a personal journal, you get the idea. Are you saying I should produce an entire set of convincing mock financial information just through ppl off the trail. Who has time for that. What would be much more interesting is a good stenography system. I would love to
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop being an idiot and read up on it. You can *not* tell. And it certainly does not show up as free space. You can *not* prove OR disprove the existence of another hidden partition. Period. "Trained to look for it", oh please.
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, there was a conversation about this last time the subject of TrueCrypt came up. Unfortunately it went mostly unnoticed, because a forensic investigator can tell if a hidden partition is present [slashdot.org], masquerading as free space:
I think you, and many other Slashdotters have 'Reiser Ego' (coined!) You see TrueCrypt as an extremely clever and infallible tool you can use to circumvent the stupidity of courts and the dunder-heads who work in computer forensics. For the most part however, these people are not stupid, and geeks are not able to avoid prosecution via their l33t h4xX0r skills.
I fear big egos will lead many geeks to underestimate their adversaries. Feel free to prove me wrong, of course. :)
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple reason why I had seeks to an area that looks empty, it's because I *used* to have files there before I deleted them, then since I'm savvy enough to use Truecrypt, I ran one of those wipe programs that overwrites it with garbage, hence what you see if you look at the drive forensically, garbage.
I came up with that in the time it took to read your post.
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:4, Interesting)
Stop being an idiot and read up on it. You can *not* tell. And it certainly does not show up as free space. You can *not* prove OR disprove the existence of another hidden partition.
Actually you can disprove the existence of another hidden volume in the corner case that the visible volume is full.
You can also eliminate the hidden volume by filling the visible one. Be interesting to see if law enforcement would be satisfied with just zeroing out the free space in your 'visible' volumes at the borders, thereby destroying your hidden one(s).
They might not 'catch a criminal' this way, but it could be seen as 'preventative'... no point in smuggling illegal data in a hidden truecrypt volume if they routinely destroy them. They can destroy hidden volumes without knowing they are there.
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:4, Interesting)
Stop being an idiot and read up on it. You can *not* tell.
Don't offer advice you're unwilling to take.
Circumstances may make this very possible to identify. Allow me to provide an example and suggest some alternatives:
Lets say you have a 100gb hard drive, and have decided to break away 15gb of that for an alternate volume. Since the OS has to be on it, it can't be very small (300mb for example) as you could do normally with an obvious encrypted disk image document. TrueCrypt choses a place somewhere within the 100gb drive to place it. Lets say it's at the 60-75gb region.
The most plausible deniability for this would be to use the "trojan" 85gb of space for your everyday use, and only reboot into the hidden volume when you had "sensitive work" to do. This would provide many examples of consistent access to the trojan, lending it credibility as being used. If you (almost) always booted into the hidden volume, it would be an easy giveaway since files rarely got modified on the trojan, so this behavior is required.
Unfortunately, over time data is spread around on your hard drive. All current OS's move the next available block pointer forward on the drive as it's used. (space is not used on a "closest to start of volume first" basis beause that can be extremely inefficient and lead to severe fragmentation) So eventually disk usage will run into the hidden partition.
If you've provided your 2nd password, truecrypt will "hop" over the hidden partition to avoid damaging it. But that's the problem. If you continue to use your trojan partition, a simple look at used disk space will see a fairly even coverage mix of free and used blocks, except for one conspicuous, contiguous 15gb chunk of unused space, smack in the middle of the "only volume" on the disk. It could be very difficult to explain to someone analyzing your drive.
ya, right. Now lets have the SECOND password please. (points gun)
There are many ways to fix this problem which have not (as of yet) been implemented by truecrypt:
1) instead of mounting an entire new bootable volume, simply mount a small hidden disk image. That could be 300mb or so, enough for quite a few sensitive documents. A 300mb continuous hole in the free space could be a single AVI file that got deleted a month ago. Totally inconspicuous.
2) instead of reserving a contiguous block of 15gb, it could be cut up into many smaller random length parts. (as in, thousands of pieces of 20-200mb in size) In fact, BOTH the trojan and hidden volumes could occupy almost the exact same space except for their directory start. With both passwords provided, whether you booted into the trojan or hidden, it would consider the union of used blocks on both hidden and trojan partitions when looking for free space to allocate. This has many benefits, including breaking up suspicious free areas into small innocent pieces, and removing the restriction of the hidden partition's size. Without this, if you set aside 15gb and find you need a little more space, you'd have to reformat and it'd be a huge mess. Since both partitions "share" the free space until it's all used, by this technique you could slowly use up all 100gb of your hard drive in any combination of trojan/hidden volume you wanted to, making it much more convenient and future-proof.
Both (1) and (2) are still vulnerable to backup analysis, although (1) would be much more difficult and certain. If you can compare the free blocks between two distant states, say a year apart, you could determine with some certainly that there are more blocks that have remained marked unused over time than should be, so "something's preventing writing to these blocks", placing suspicion on the drive.
If you insist on continuing to use truecrypt, you'd be advised to make sure the hidden partition is near the end of the disk, and that you defragment used AND free space often, so that the scattering of newly allocated files never gets very close to your hidden partition. While inconv
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
To answer your points:
1) The default filesystem of TrueCrypt volumes is FAT32. Unlike modern filesystems, FAT32 sticks new data as close to the start of the disk as possible, leading to the inefficiency and fragmentation issues that FAT32 is notorious for.
2) The hidden volume is placed at the end of the filesystem, the area of the disk that, on a FAT32 filesystem, is most likely to be empty.
I believe this answers your concerns.
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless it has a password that will *securely* wipe the hidden volume when entered, then it only has an illusion of a defence against that which is in reality no more than another example of security by obscurity.
Worse thant that, anyone with half a clue will be working on a clone of the original drive. No point in needlessly potentially damaging evidence. So if your dealing with someone competent, and who has time on their hands to do things right, a secure erase panic password will buy you nothing.
Re:Only works if it's default install (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I'm quite positive that you do have a hidden volume. It's where you're storing all of your terrorist secrets, and unless you reveal the password then this ballpeen hammer has a date with your fingers.
Still don't want to talk? Maybe you just need a little more electricity.
We'll stop when you are able to prove to the nice men who are protecting your country that you _don't_ have a hidden encrypted partition, and then they will let you go.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Although you have something of a point, I think all those damned trees have blocked your view of the forest.
Very, very few of us use TC because we fear having our fingers broken to discover our secrets. We use it to keep client data safe from accidental loss; we use it to store personal info on shared
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
A good defense... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes it is a good defence against that. Border guards aren't going to have enough time to find your encrypted containers while you are there, and if you have to give up your laptop, or if they take a copy of the HD, then they can't access the information because they don't have the password (and they can't force the password out of you, because you have already re-entered the country (assuming you are a yank)).
And if they do find a container, and force you to give up the password http://it.slashdot.org/comme [slashdot.org]
Relevant links (Score:5, Informative)
Project homepage is here: http://www.truecrypt.org/ [truecrypt.org]
Release notes here http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=version-history [truecrypt.org]
(Btw, these links should be in the article, instead of an external (sponsored?) one).
OK (Score:2, Interesting)
even if you're forced to reveal your pre-boot password to an adversary, you can give them one that boots into a plausible decoy operating system, with your hidden operating system remaining completely undetectable
In what case would this be useful? If you have an adversary that can force you to give a password, I'm sure they can force you to boot up the correct operating system as well. And if they are in a position to force you to give up the password, it might not be wise to try to play a switcharoo on them.
In the cases where this would actually be useful (with your boss or the government inspections), they will probably have the ability to detect that you are not being entirely truthful. You can hide an operati
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
From the release notes:
It appears to work just like a hidden volume [truecrypt.org] (also described in this post [slashdot.org]).
In other words, you worry to much, these guys are really really smart.
Re:OK (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OK (Score:5, Informative)
So when they get the first password, they continue until they get another or they decide there's no way you could have withstood that much. And when they get your second password, they'll still go on in the hope of a third, unless the data they find would totally fill the disk.
Each time you give up something, they'll assume there may be more until they've kept torturing you for a long time without getting any more information.
Who said it's torture-proof? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have to worry about it being torture-proof, you're almost certainly dead anyway.
All it needs to be, for most people, is audit-proof.
And for that you need a business case for having it. Porn is probably not a good choice.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone who truly has something to hide to the extent of worrying about torture will have an utterly plausible explanation or ten prepared.
No, anyone who truly has something to hide will not send someone through customs with compromising information. That's where compartmentalization comes in. Encrypt your file, break it apart, and mail the parts to yourself separately. If you really want to be paranoid - to different recipients at different addresses. On different days. If one package
Re: (Score:2)
Re:OK (Score:5, Informative)
Even the NSA would have to devote a significant part of their resources. 95^12 is over 500 sextillion combinations. So, say you've got a really really fast CPU that can do 1 billion test decrypts a second (which is unfeasibly fast at the current time). It would take that computer over 17 million years to find the password.
So, let's say that the NSA has a million CPUs at their disposal, it would still take over 17 years to decrypt. So, they'd have to be pretty sure that you have some seriously cool porn on your PC before they start devoting 100,000,000 impossibly fast CPUs to the task of cracking your password in a couple of months.
The Storm Botnet would take centuries to hack a random 12 character password (it would cut down on spam though).
Of course, if you choose 'password' as your password it might not take quite as long.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No..
The decoy OS is not a outer, non hidden volume, it is a seperate partition. You must run the decoy OS regulary so it becomes obvouus it is a used OS. YOu can do safely
Re: (Score:2)
If you have data of such importance as to require this kind of security, you have backups of it. You don't care if your hidden volume gets overwritten while the secret police are searching your regular volume, because once they're done you can just restore.
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Great - I'll keep my geek-cred (Score:5, Funny)
Great, I can now maintain my geek-cred by hiding the fact that I sometimes have to boot into Windows to run things like a GPS map updater. No more microsoft on the boot menu.
Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad. I often travel between the US and China on business ( I live on the China side ). I've always been careful with sensitive data, but now I'm absolutely fascist. Why? I have no fear of the Chinese government. Besides, I work for a Chinese company. I fear my own country illegally accessing files to which they have absolutely no rights whatsoever.
Honestly. If someone works for the US government, pulls some CEO's laptop at the boarder for "inspection" and gets free access to all the company financials, would they do the right thing? How many semi-intelligent people wouldn't be tempted to start buying stock options or call their best friend with a really good "tip"? Even if they SEC investigated, they would never find the link.
Over the last several years, I've always been treated very respectfully inside China and going to and from. It is in the US, my own country, where I'm treated as if I'm already guilty.
Back to the topic at hand. TrueCrypt is a wonderful product. Everyone should be using it.
Re:Sad (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, what Kool-aid have you been drinking? I've been to China many times too, and love the place, but I'm afraid you're being seriously delusional if you think it's safe to be that blasé around the Chinese authorities. The American search procedures at the US border would indeed be unconstitutional were they conducted in the country, but at least you know up front what the rules are. In China, your rights are vague at best and your recourse to law is minimal. If next time you enter China the border officers did decide they are going to take your laptop away, what could you do about it? Oh, but if they're polite, then that's OK, right?
Fanboyism of China is not helpful to the country and unattractive, so please stop it; it's embarrassing, and even potentially dangerous.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Fanboyism of China is not helpful ... and even potentially dangerous."
Thanks for the laugh. Oh wait, you were serious? LOOK! There's a "terrorist" behind you! Boo!
Then again, how could we not have expected the nation that is chronically high on cocaine to become paranoid delusional?
Re:Sad (Score:4, Insightful)
What could you do if your laptop gets taken at the US border? File a complaint? Woot.
Chiming in with the GP here, I feel much safer and much better treated going into China than going into the US. There I am treated as though I am an actual person, here I am treated as though I am an annoyance.
If DHS gets their way, we'll be treated worse than that. DHS wants to require all airline passengers to wear a taser bracelet [washingtontimes.com]
Re:Sad (Score:5, Interesting)
This absolutely mirrors my own experience. I live in the EU and I travel mostly around the EU and Africa. When I get to the US I'm treated as a convicted criminal and I'm a US citizen. I am routinely hassled and threatened by petty dictators of nano-dictorships. Which I find completely bizarre... Hell the security & customs agents in Zimbabwe are more polite than the ones in Atlanta.
Another thing I find complete asinine is that little form you fill out saying where you are going stay while you are in the US. I've been staying at 1600 Pennsylvania ave. for going on 6 years and no one has so much a blinked.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sad (Score:4, Funny)
And that he hasn't is crushingly depressing.
One question (Score:5, Funny)
True crypt is fabulous. But is it good enough to hide a body?
Hans
Breaking volumes (Score:2)
Re:Breaking volumes (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, if law enforcement "fucked up your volume" as you so nicely put it, they have just destroyed whatever evidence you where trying to hide. So why would anyone using true crypt have a problem with that?
They'd also get in trouble (Score:3, Informative)
For two reasons:
1) The proper procedure is to make a verified copy, and then work on the copy. Many reasons not the least of which being that if you screw up accidentally you can make another copy. You don't go mucking around on the original drive.
2) Law enforcement isn't welcome to just destroy property because they feel like it. They can't burn down your house and say "Well we thought there might be drugs in it, even though we never found any." Likewise they can't just screw up your data for shits and gri
Re:Breaking volumes (Score:5, Insightful)
AFAIK, yes, if you fill the decoy volume it will kill your hidden volume.
which makes you wonder how long it'll be until a tool is developed for law enforcement specifically designed to fuck up these volumes.
They can only do that if they've confiscated your laptop *and* acquired your 'decoy' password. At that point, your only concerns are they not getting your data and you being able to deny the data is there in the first place.
Somebody deleting all your sensitive files is not a bad thing to happen at that point.
Independence day? (Score:5, Insightful)
While most of the US was celebrating Independence Day, the true fellow geeks over at TrueCrypt released version 6.0 of TrueCrypt over the long weekend.
That might not be just a coincidence.
NSA backdoor? (Score:4, Funny)
It's not a silver bullet but it's good enough... (Score:4, Insightful)
I keep a copy of both on a USB key drive and on an external hard drive which never leave my home. As well as a non-encrypted copy because I'm still wondering what happens to that encrypted file if I happen to have a fucked up cluster on the drive at some point.
The rational for using encryption is not that I am afraid of the local authorities, there is nothing on my computer that would cause me any long lasting trouble, despite the fact that I live and work in a limited freedom area (Middle East), but simply to avoid opportunity theft.
For example I can't recall how many time one of my clients or partner handed me a usb key drive containing all his companies financial statement, bank account number, internal price list with profit margin, internal memo, personal info and the wifey's naked picture so that I could copy them a few documents and then forgot about the keydrive because we kept chatting.
Sometime I too need to get some files from them and I don't want to look like I'm watching them while they dig around my keydrive. I now know that everything a casual observer should not see is encrypted so I don't mind throwing my key drive over the table to someone I don't know.
I don't understand the paranoid people here who believes in plausible deniability, decoy drive and other such thing. I also wonder if the same people only use their computers in safe room with controlled EM environment and bullet proof shade.
I didn't know either that so many people carried state secrets around international airports. To those I will say that if the NSA/FSB/Interpol/MI4/Mossad/Mafia or even the local police wants the content of your drive they will get it. period. It doesn't matter what you do. Unless of course you also work for one of the aforementioned in which case you might have been trained to accept that your life is worth less than the content of said drive.
I have never been subjected to physical or psychological torture (aside from clients and some ex-gf of course) but I am not Jack Bauer and I would "come clean" very quickly. I would give the real password, not the decoy, because I believe consequences would certainly worsen my situation if my interrogators were not convinced.
I am also pretty sure that the simple sentence: "The accused has so far always refused to give his encrypted drive password." would certainly help convincing a jury beyond "reasonable doubt" (In countries where such thing even exists).
Some people here should start to seriously look at themselves and wonder if what they are trying to hide is really worth it or if it's just about mommy not finding their downloadable girlfriend picture collection.
Here's the non-spam link, dickhead (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.truecrypt.org/news.php [truecrypt.org]
Detecting Truecrypt. (Score:4, Interesting)
Normally, unused blocks on a drive have whatever data pattern the formatting software puts there (typically something like "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF..." or "55AAAA5555AAAA55..."), or remnants of other files, or parts of free block lists and empty extents and the like. If you have a big chunk of random noise in the middle that's an indication that you've got an encrypted volume in there somewhere.
Re:Detecting Truecrypt. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Uh, I'd mod you down as Misleading if that was possible. If you at least bothered to read something about it before commenting, you would know that you are wrong.
From, the TrueCrypt documentation at http://www.truecrypt.org/hiddenvolume.php [truecrypt.org] :
"Even when the outer volume is mounted, it is impossible to prove whether there is a hidden volume within it or not*, because free space on any TrueCrypt volume is always filled with random data when the volume is created** and no part of the (dismounted) hidden volume
Multi-core support (Score:3, Insightful)
Works in FreeBSD (Score:3, Informative)
Using the patches in the TrueCrypt 5 port [freebsd.org], TrueCrypt 6 builds and appears to run fine on FreeBSD \o/
An open letter to all the paranoid freaks... (Score:3, Insightful)
if you are so concerned about getting captured and tortured for normal/hidden/hidden(hidden)/hidden(hidden(hidden)))/ad naseum passphrases, then quit having digital copies of your stuff in the first place.
99% of the TrueCrypt userbase is just fine using it on jump drives to keep stuff secure from the guy who finds it when you lose it on the train/plane/whatever.
Quit making up impossible "movie scenarios" (there, I used a Schneierism, you HAVE to respect me now!) about how gov't agents are going to come in black helicopters for your fetish vids and the 200 page backstory you wrote for a character you rolled in middle school. No one cares.
Yours truly,
-Reality.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You forget that the US is currently waging war on its own citizens in the form of the War on Drug Users. There are many people out there who are doing nothing but growing plants and consuming them in the privacy of their own home, for whom there is a real risk of government agents with black helicopters taking them and their data. That is the reality we live in.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you miss the point of things like multiple passwords with volumes hidden in volumes, and it doesn't involve being able to resist torture. Resisting an audit, legal threat, or annoying security agent is a more likely scenario.
I would be willing to bet that a non-trivial number of people who something illegal on their computer from pirated versions of software, "hacking tools", pirated entertainment, pr0n illegal in one country or another, etc. The ability to effectively resist being compelled (with
An irritatingly nightmarish experience (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a semi- geek when it comes to Windows, a non-"Power User". But I had a need for this so I thought I would give TrueCrypt a whirl, and had a real nightmarish day and a half.
This being slashdot, I'm only inviting flames about the various things I'm doing wrong. But it does seem to me that TrueCrypt is missing a very obvious feature--encrypt other partitions in the same manner as the boot partition (that is, online and allow them to be mounted transparently) that would have saved me a lot of grief.
See, I have C: and D: partitions, and all the user profile directories are on D:, because that's how our IT department sets things up. Do you see what's coming? Well, I encrypted the system partition without a problem. But now, the D: partition needs to be encrypted, and there's no way to do that without destroying it.
Okay, fine, "back up" and "restore", right? Except that applications, including TrueCrypt and Windows, are pretty highly dependent on the presence of that profile directory, as I learned to my moaning grief. (Yes! TrueCrypt apparently stores which volumes you want "automatically" mounted in your profile directory!)
One new TrueCrypt-encrypted NTFS filesystem later, and I realized there was no way to get the thing mounted before anyone logs in. Or rather, there probably is a way, but it's nothing like editing AUTOEXEC.BAT or something simple. There are registry keys that can be edited but "startup" in Windows-land always seems to refer to "user logs in" and not "boot time."
Additionally, the TrueCrypt command-line did not seem to work as advertised. I'm not a genius but I do carefully read documentation and double-check command-lines before I issue them, and it should not have been possible for TrueCrypt to attempt to remount and repair the system partition as another drive letter, but it did. So I gave up on my dream of having an encrypted C: and D: mounted at boot time, so the user profile directory can be there waiting for the user to log in.
Did I mention how grumpy Windows and everything else gets when the profile directory goes away? Very grumpy indeed. A forest of "registry may be corrupted" error messages greets any attempt to change anything, and so forth. After struggling with these kinds of issues for some time, I really just wiped D: for good and let the system "rebuild" the profile directories on first login. Now I have a bunch of reconfiguration to do and things still aren't right (for example, start menus aren't correct because lots of programs had shortcuts in D:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu).
It really seems to me that this is not that unusual a situation (two partitions need to be mounted to boot the system) that should be accommodated by something like TrueCrypt. I'm disappointed in TrueCrypt, red-bloodedly refreshed in my hatred of Windows and harboring evil thoughts toward my company IT department.
Re:Suggestion: Truecrypt LiveCD -Stealth- Install (Score:4, Informative)
This is discussed in the "plausible deniability" section of the TrueCrypt docs.
The recommended solution is to ensure you have a plausible use for the existing installation of TrueCrypt, for example some porn or customer records in a separate container, allowing you to deny the existence of the real container.
This means you do not have to put yourself in a situation where you are denying using TC and one tiny mistake could indicate that you have used TrueCrypt when no visible TC volume is present.
On the other hand, I'm sure most of the bootable Linux LiveCDs will continue to include TrueCrypt.
If you want to do it with Windows, use BartPE as discussed in the TrueCrypt FAQ.
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose so, but is it desirable? You could certainly build a Linux boot image which would mount all disks and make encryption tools available. But normally, the fact that you're using crypto isn't the secret. The adversary has probably already pulled your email records from Echelon, or issued national security letters to your ISP. They know abou