Undocumented Bypass in PGP Whole Disk Encryption 316
A non-mouse Coward writes "PGP Corporation's widely adopted Whole Disk Encryption product apparently has an encryption bypass feature that allows an encrypted drive to be accessed without the boot-up passphrase challenge dialog, leaving data in a vulnerable state if the drive is stolen when the bypass feature is enabled. The feature is also apparently not in the documentation that ships with the PGP product, nor the publicly available documentation on their website, but only mentioned briefly in the customer knowledge base. Jon Callas, CTO and CSO of PGP Corp., responded that this feature was required by unnamed customers and that competing products have similar functionality."
unnamed customers (Score:5, Funny)
And People Wonder Why Open Source! (Score:4, Insightful)
I know what I have, and what I get, and what others cannot get... Not that I have anything to hide. Just that I like my privacy.
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For now anyway.
If people complete various "hard" problems on quantum computers then the non-people at the NSA can probably afford to throw two billion (or whatever) at it to crack ALL MODERN ENCRYPTION that doesn't use quantum devices for keys.
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Ah, but that's not necessarily a defence against the NSA! Their backdoors might not be hidden in closed source binaries, or in obfuscated source code, or in your CPU hardware, or even injected covertly by your copy of GCC when it recognises encryption code. They might be mathematical backdoors, hidden inside well-known ciphers that are generally thought to be secure. There's the old st
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http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Data_Encryption_Standard&oldid=161828931 [wikipedia.org], so the Wiki article is versioned.
I guess it all depends upon whether you think factoring large numbers is a hard problem, whether special cases might exist, whether huge amounts of investment dollars matter, etc. From there you make your own call about whether or not to go all elliptical (another
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Will be made illegal very soon :(
Re:unnamed customers (Score:5, Insightful)
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Random Example Bank or Retail would want this (Score:3, Insightful)
If you RTFA, you'll see that it's a feature that you can only turn on if you've already got access to the disk, and PGP did it so it only works once.
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
"encryption bypass" ?
That basically turns the entire thing into a physiological magic trick.
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Never mind; mod me down. (Score:2)
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closed source encryption software??!! (Score:2, Insightful)
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In other words, the parent's point is perfect
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This is not uncommon, though the lack of documentation is.... Most such encryption products offer the ability to specify a master encryption key across an organization. The way that works is that your individual crypto key protects a copy of the drive-specific crypto key, which then protects the drive. The company you work for has a master crypto key which is also used to encrypt the drive-specific crypto key. (Usually the latter part is done with PK crypto so the employee can only encrypt contents with
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Yeh, there might be an FSA/NBI/CGB/KIA/Ruffian Masha/Rush Coleman/Gary Limbaugh side door. It is not unpossible that an insecurity vendor might do this.
PGP Does Open Source for Peer Review (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:closed source encryption software??!! (Score:5, Informative)
The only people to enable would know about it (Score:3, Insightful)
Did anyone read the response? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does crap like this make it to the front page of Slashdot?
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I see what is possibly another. I may enable a hole of this form:
If someone gets access to the disk or its contents before the reboot, they can clone the state of the encryption software - which will do one "unlocked" reboot. Later (up to a point where the encryption key is changed) they can shut down the machine, reapply this state, and bring it up without the password, gaining access to data that has been ad
Re:Did anyone read the response? (Score:5, Informative)
They need to do unattended automated reboots of thousands of computers. These are enterprise customers.
They have the encryption key, and they want to apply security updates and reboot the computers. When the employees come to work in the morning, they expect the computers to be on and operational, as they left it.
If you don't use the feature, then it poses no risk. If you need to apply unattended updates to computers on a large scale, going to each computer and typing in the passphrase is not practical.
This is a non-issue, and a FUD article. You need to have UNLOCKED access to the encrypted volume to enable this feature.
Normal users using PGPDisk and not using this feature are at no greater risk for it existing.
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Because Remote Sites don't have IT Staff (Score:2)
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Now, assume they can set up a honey net, one which explicitly mimics the targets presumed safe haven. The target logs in, may be operating as root/administrator (and, FTS
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Re:Did anyone read the response? (Score:4, Informative)
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Let me just get it straight. It's easier for you to accept that PGP has a malicious backdoor than it is to accept that they have a sensible feature that is quite useful (if ill-documented, but apparently it's mentioned in the knowledge base)?
A small dose of paranoia is healthy, but we're talking about a feature that has to be activated by someone who actually has access to the keys to begin with, that is, supposedly, valid for only one reboot, and that has a very valid use case.
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With propretary software, there's no way to know. It could have any number of malicious or ill-conceived/insecure features. Why risk it?
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Because a backdoor can just as easily be slipped into open source software, if not more easily since everyone's assuming "Oh it's open, someone else is looking for backdoors." On top of that, when things go south there's no one to point the finger at and no one to go to for support.
Look at all the security flaws that have popped up in Firefox over the past two years that co
to put out some of the flames (Score:5, Insightful)
"We call it a passphrase bypass because that is what it is. It is a dangerous, but needed feature. If you run a business where you remotely manage computers, you need to remotely reboot them."
and
"You cannot enable the feature without cryptographic access to the volume. If you do not have it enabled, you are not affected, either. I think this is an important thing to remember. Anyone who can enable the feature can mount the volume. It is a feature for manageability, and that's often as important as security, because without manageability, you can't use a security feature."
makes pretty good sense to me
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Re:to put out some of the flames (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:to put out some of the flames (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is a nice(TM) feature and might be useful, but that is not the problem.
The problem is that the feature is fricking undocumented. There is absolutely no way to know it is there and how to look out for it. It also means that you can't just know how many of these backdoors are in there. Is it only the first undocumented backdoor ? How many more of the convenience features are in there by customer demand ? How do they affect me ?
When it comes to security software or hardware any and all undocumented features are BUGS! It's a principle, not a convenience!
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Is it? (Score:2)
Balls - what about POTENTIAL customers? (Score:2)
If they'd been open about it wouldn't even have made Slashdot, so it's a bit of an own goal - now they have to go and explain it all against a tide of misunderstanding. On stuff like this full disclosure is the better path to take IMHO.
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Just so I understand the fricking problem...
If you have a PGP-encrypted drive, and you know the passphrase, you can unlock the drive until the next reboot. But PGP - and others as well, from TFA - have added a mode that unlocks it until the reboot AFTER that.
Most people wouldn't want to use such a feature, because it leaves your drive exposed for a longer period of time. Even PGP calls it "dangerous, but needed" (for enterprise environments that do
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The million dollar question: If the volume is mounted, can anyone enable the feature, or do you need to re-enter the passphrase?
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Couldn't a virus or other program running enable this "feature" without the user knowing? Basically you could set up the virus to enable the feature on shutdown, and then steal their laptop afterwards. Then when the thief boots it up, no password required.
That's described in the third part of TFA, conveniently omitted by the editor.
http://securology.blogspot.com/2007/10/response-to-jon-callas-pgp-encryption.html [blogspot.com]
What also surprises me about the customers that would require PGP WDE to have such a feature is the way they would have to use the feature. Since this is command line driven, this is obviously designed for use in scripting. I have a hard time fathoming an enterprise organization that would, on one hand, require the use of full disk encryption of computers and then, on the other hand, distribute a script with a hardcoded passphrase in it, presumably using a software distribution tool like Microsoft's Systems Management Server (SMS), or similar. The risk of this feature of PGP WDE notwithstanding, we are talking about admins using shared/generic/static passphrases for all or many computers stored in plaintext scripts, set to execute in mass. If the complexity doesn't accidentally disclose the default administrative passphrase, then the fact that fallible humans keeping human readable scripts in N locations used every time Microsoft releases a patch certainly will. An average security conscious IT shop running Windows products (because PGP WDE is a product for Windows) will have at least 12 opportunities per year for devices to get stolen when they are in this vulnerable "bypass" state. Does the use of this PGP WDE (or any full disk encryption vendor as Jon claims competitors have similar functionality) feature increase the risk that laptops will be stolen on the eve of the second Tuesday of every month?
Except that the "virus" is an update script from IT on the eve of "patch Tuesday" (this is basically a Microsoft Windows only product) and the machine gets stolen then.
Note also that even though this password bypass feature must be enabled, there is no way to completely disable it.
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Unlikely to be telling the truth (Score:2)
Heh (Score:3, Funny)
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Many products allow disabling preboot auth (Score:5, Informative)
The software has a feature called "Pre-boot Authentication", by which the encryption software is loaded after the bios, but before the (generally Windows) operating system. The user's password is used to generate the decryption key, so theorhetically not even the NSA could decrypt the laptop without the user's password.
Here's the flaw - the software has a checkbox to disable Pre-boot authentication. What this does is generate a default user with a random password, and then store this random password obfuscated but in clear-text in the same disk area decryption software. When you talk to the sales-people, they sell this as a feature, in fact about half of Utimaco's customers (so I'm told) run it in this mode because the encryption becomes transparent and it is much less intrusive on the user. (Basically the disk is automatically decrypted each time the laptop is booted, but you have to have a valid Windows login to get in.) Buried in the help documentation are warnings "For security reasons, you should Never disable pre-boot authentication". So the engineers and the company know the weakness of disabling pre-boot authentication, but they don't tell their customers when they sell the software.
Today it seems to break into these laptops with pre-boot authentication disabled you would need somewhat sophisticated tools and techniques, basically the same tools and techniques people commonly use to "crack" commercial software today. But I'm guessing that it won't be very long before someone takes the time to build this crack and releases it, rendering the laptop encryption useless to anyone who can Google for "Utimaco Crack", etc. Basically all the crack would need to do is grab the default user's password off the disk and use or duplicate the decryption algorithms that are also in clear-text on the disk.
I've talked to a number of IT security folks, and basically it seems like most people trust the sales folks and don't understand that its basically impossible to have strong encryption without having the decryption key stored off the disk (like on a smart card, or in the brain of the user.)
We use the worlds strongest safe doors (Score:2)
This dangerous, because it gives a false sense of security. Its an easy way to make full disk encryption have zero security benefit. Its might a feature that this feature is so obscure enough that security neophytes won't shoot their foot off. I'd be happiest if the feature automatically deleted the decryption key during the reboot. Thats enough to let IT do an unattended reboot and simultaneously discourage people from misusing the feature.
Re:Many products allow disabling preboot auth (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is a company may have thousands of laptops in the wild and Active Directory passwords that expire every 90 days. Because the PBA credentials aren't integrated with AD that means you have a nightmare password management situation. Utimaco does provide a server to try to alleviate this problem, but it's still a major management pain.
It's true that by default the PBA bypass key gets stored obfuscated but in plain text on the hard drive if you bypass PBA. But if you have a modern computer with a trusted platform module (TPM) you can configure SafeGuard Easy to store the key there. You can also bind the hard drive to that particular TPM chip so that it is unaccessible if attached to another computer.
http://americas.utimaco.com/safeguard_easy/manual_v430/1-245.html [utimaco.com]
PGP corp (Score:2)
We read their "policy" and started laughing, however. It isn't a policy so much as a standard, which explicitly requires all computers run PGP Whole Disk Encryption. No other form of data protection is acceptable.
I'm inclined to
the name of the product tells it all (Score:2)
Seth
Which full disk encryption to use? (Score:3, Interesting)
Password recovery should be possible..? (Score:2)
We are constantly told that data that's only overwritten once on a magnetic drive is recoverable. So, if one could figure out which section of the drive gets the password written to it (an easy enough exercise given that the boot code that mounts the encrypted volume is in a fixed location and largely static)
Obviously... (Score:2)
unnamed customers??? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. if i have a real (paying) customer who needs this, i will supply them (and only them) with a customised version.
2. or i fully document the feature.
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Once upon a hard drive bare
I pinged a host that wasn't there
It wasn't there again today
The host resolves to NSA.
- Burma Shave
Did you read the article? (Score:2)
Didn't think so...
Re:PGP or not so PGP? (Score:5, Informative)
Jon *did* call it "dangerous" (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is he modded down? (Score:2)
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Lack of security, new product proposal (Score:2, Funny)
With that understanding, I am developing a new data security system using heretofore unrealized technology, and plan to bring it to market in the near future: look for products from BHS in stores during the month of No-never.
This message brought to you by the unique folks at
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Volume mapped to /dev/null?
Re:Why is he modded down? (Score:5, Informative)
There isn't a backdoor. If you encrypt your hard drive, then lose it, nobody can read it.
If on the other hand, if you've encrypted your boot disk, and you want to remotely reboot your machine, you're going to need someway to feed the password to it before it can bring up the OS (and the networking layer).
This feature allows you to store a password for 1 time use. Then you reboot the machine, and when it comes up, it reads the password and erases it.
It's a useful feature. Doesn't effect you if you don't use it. Even if you do use it, you'd have to set the password then forget to reboot for it to be a problem.
Basically this whole story is a non-issue. The moderation on the grandparent is a reflection of his failure to reason through this.
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I mean, without documentation, it could be doing ANYTHING.
Re:Fine by me.. (Score:5, Informative)
This actually DOES sound like a very good feature and I would hope other products have it, too. Wish the editors would RTFA, too...
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Does anyone happen to know if this applies to the non-commercial versions, like 6.02i, or 6.5 user compiled? or is it only the commercial releases?
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Personaly, I like boob surfing for the booty. Maybe a little motorboating while I'm at it.
Re:Fine by me.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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And what is the problem with that? If you have access to the machine and can unobserved alter the machine to boot different code, you could also trick users into entering their passphrase in a fake password screen. Whole Disk encryption is normally used to protect the data when the computer/drive is stolen and not against an attacker who has !UNOBSERVED! unlimited physical access to the drive in question.
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Sheesh.
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You forgot the part where you descend form the ceiling suspended by a wire harness and hang upside down while typing into the console.
With that degree of access, there are a million things you could do t
Re:Fine by me.. (Score:4, Insightful)
They also just lost credibility.
Oh, I don't know. From the start, all the promised was Pretty Good Privacy. Not like Fort Knox, more like a combination padlock on an open-backed locker.
I find myself wishing more and more that Phil Zimmerman hadn't sold to NAI.
Does GPG have a full-disk mode? I think I could trust something with open source and reliable software freedom.
There was GPGDisk (Score:5, Interesting)
There is/was a program around that used GPG to do FDE, called GPGDisk. I'm not sure whether it used your installed copy of GPG to do the heavy lifting, or if it just included the same code, or worked using the same algorithms but had its own totally separate crypto engine. It was reasonably popular for a while, but I think a lot of people who were using it have now switched to TrueCrypt.
However, GPGDisk did offer some unique features, like the ability to encrypt a disk using a GPG key, and some fairly fine-grained access controls that you could set up for multiple users (IIRC). Every once in a while someone will mention it on the comments on Bruce Schneier's blog, so apparently it's still getting some use. But it doesn't offer some of the neater features that TrueCrypt does, like plausible deniability or containers-in-containers, I don't believe.
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Which is why you want to use a program like TrueCrypt. It's GPL so the source code is out there. Supports a shit load of encryptions and is free.
Re:Fine by me.. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Unnamed Customers" (Score:4, Interesting)
How much do you want to bet that "unnamed customers" are synonymous with "various federal and state police agencies, DOD, and NSA"?
Takers?
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I just think it's ironic that it would seem by their actions that they aren't interested in OUR security as much as they are interested in their own by denying us ours.
Re:"Unnamed Customers" (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA, those "unnamed customers" are companies that have the need to remotely reboot their machines. This feature is NOT a backdoor - it merely allows someone WHO ALREADY HAS WRITE ACCESS TO THE ENCRYPED DRIVE (i.e. someone who has already given the passphrase) to grant a one-time certificate that permits a reboot without asking for the passphrase again. The major risk here is that someone will rob your store during the 60 seconds it takes to reboot over the phone, a possible, but highly unlikely scenario.
Re:Fine by me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the feature isn't enabled by default. It requires cryptographic access *and* knowledge of its existence to turn it on. And if you already have cryptographic access, then the whole issue is academic.
You pompously declaring it "DISHONEST" in capital letters smacks of the typical random-geek's kneejerk first post on a messageboard thread. And FWIW, I don't know how much your oh-so-important business with them is worth anyway; I suspect that the other client probably *was* worth more. (Of course, it's quite plausible that the views of *many* smaller clients who disliked the feature would be a serious counterweight. However, if you're going to act like your *individual* view carries so much weight, expect scepticism).
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This is needed functionality for a number of places, for example domain controllers at remote sites, which should have everything protected from b
It's _still_ a backdoor, though better than most (Score:2)
I'd prefer to see the key stored somewhere other
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It is guaranteed to be absolutely fucking bulletproof. Buy now and we'll include an absolutely fucking bulletproof vest, for free! It's guaranteed! You can try it yourself!
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I keep hearing that the 2nd amendment would help in this situation but I haven't noticed any militias storming the local branch of
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Well, our second amendment rights have been eroded... There's no real way for the people to go to a store and buy shotguns to take on the government when they have pl
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It's still a crappy implementation. What they needed is a more sophisticated system that allows multiple keys and access levels. i.e. When a user creates a volume it also tags that volume with a "master key" that the I
Why is it necessary to have two passwords? (Score:3)
The only reasons I can imagine for having two passwords are convenience for IT, when they aren't fully automated, and secret government surveillance.
An organization with 1,000 users must manage 1,000 passwords, anyway.
What happens in an organization when a member of the IT staff leaves? The IT access special passwo
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Too, IT shouldn't need special access passwords. Each IT person should have their own account with "IT Special Access". Then when that person leaves, that account is disabled/removed. Again, you don't need to change anything. Only a few, Manager/CTO and maybe VP, need root passwords. And when they leave, those passwords can be updated
PGP, like AT&T, allows secret access? (Score:2)
Does that mean you agree? The only real reason to do things the PGP way is because of surveillance by the secret police?
I don't completely understand... (Score:2)
I will experiment with the method you suggest. Sounds interesting.
Of course, TrueCrypt does not allow full hard disk encryption. The boot partition needs to be unencrypted, I think.
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I have it on Good Word(tm) that there are comms boxes out there (think routers and things like that) have have '2 sets of books', as it were. two sets of mgmt commands and 'user manuals'. one for the normal customers and one for 'special' customers.
I can't add more to this (I actually don't know more than this, thankfully!) but I fully believe it to be true. (I've been in the data comm world for almost 20 yrs now, if th
Want a better world? Work towards that. (Score:2)
A better world will be available to us if we get rid of the corrupters, weapons investors, and oil squeeze investors, and begin again insisting on the rule of law.
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Yes...why is that? Who's behind it, that's what I'd like to know!
TWW
This is how it works (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a scenario:
1) Install PGP and encrypt the drive.
2) Reboot
3) Turn on the bypass for the next reboot
4) Shutdown
5) Remove the drive and stick it (or copy of the drive) in another computer as a secondary drive
6) Try to access the drive
From your posts, it appears you think you'll see all the files. The simple fact is that you