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I think the most likely situation is this: Bitlocker can save backup keys in the cloud where they can probably be subpoenad by the police. If the victim used a

I think the most likely situation is this: Bitlocker can save backup keys in the cloud where they can probably be subpoenad by the police. If the victim used a password manager without encryption (e.g. browser) and used or saved the same password somewhere else, they might have gotten it this way.

hh3k0 3y ago
I might be wrong, but something tells me that people who use LUKS to encrypt a hard drive would not use the password in question for an online service.
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  People are dumber than you think. Remember all the mistakes DPR did and commenters were like "a criminal mastermind creating the Amazon of drugs couldn't have possibly asked on StackOverflow using his real identity how to build that".
jeroenhd 3y ago
Bitlocker saves the recovery key to the cloud, not the unlock PIN. Both can be used to recover access to the data, but the recovery key is not directly related to the password chosen. Furthermore, the article talks about LUKS, which is decidedly not related to Bitlocker. I doubt they would've spent the ridiculous amount of money you need to crack LUKS though. Most likely, the password was a phrase that could be brute forced through a dictionary attack, or it was reused somewhere else. That's not to say we shouldn't move to Argon2i as GPU performance increases over time. Argon is proven to be stronger and there's very little reason not to upgrade if you can get your bootloader to unlock the modern LUKS standard (i.e. not GRUB).
- Gasp0de 3y ago
  I'm sorry if my comment was unclear. The person whose laptops were confiscated by the police stated that his bitlocker encrypted windows pc was also cracked by the police. My point was: They could have gotten the bitlocker recovery key, then found his password somewhere on the windows pc and used that to "crack" the LUKS encrypted partition.
dist-epoch 3y ago
That's not true, Bitlocker offers the option to save the encryption keys. It's your choice and it's clearly labeled: https://www.top-password.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/save-your-bitlocker-recovery-key.png https://www.top-password.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/10... Besides, the user also had a Windows laptop encrypted with Bitlocker, and the police failed to crack that one (see top comment).
- Gasp0de 3y ago
  I think you are mistaken, the original article in french states that the BitLocker computer was not cracked by the local police, but was accessed later by some cyber-department of the police: https://nantes.indymedia.org/posts/87395/une-lettre-divan-enferme-a-la-prison-de-villepinte-perquisitions-et-disques-durs-dechiffres/ https://nantes.indymedia.org/posts/87395/une-lettre-divan-en.... You are right that you can choose to backup recovery keys to the cloud, I just guessed that this would be one possible scenario.

hh3k0 3y ago

I might be wrong, but something tells me that people who use LUKS to encrypt a hard drive would not use the password in question for an online service.

dist-epoch 3y ago
People are dumber than you think. Remember all the mistakes DPR did and commenters were like "a criminal mastermind creating the Amazon of drugs couldn't have possibly asked on StackOverflow using his real identity how to build that".

jeroenhd 3y ago

Bitlocker saves the recovery key to the cloud, not the unlock PIN. Both can be used to recover access to the data, but the recovery key is not directly related to the password chosen. Furthermore, the article talks about LUKS, which is decidedly not related to Bitlocker. I doubt they would've spent the ridiculous amount of money you need to crack LUKS though. Most likely, the password was a phrase that could be brute forced through a dictionary attack, or it was reused somewhere else. That's not to say we shouldn't move to Argon2i as GPU performance increases over time. Argon is proven to be stronger and there's very little reason not to upgrade if you can get your bootloader to unlock the modern LUKS standard (i.e. not GRUB).

Gasp0de 3y ago
I'm sorry if my comment was unclear. The person whose laptops were confiscated by the police stated that his bitlocker encrypted windows pc was also cracked by the police. My point was: They could have gotten the bitlocker recovery key, then found his password somewhere on the windows pc and used that to "crack" the LUKS encrypted partition.

dist-epoch 3y ago

That's not true, Bitlocker offers the option to save the encryption keys. It's your choice and it's clearly labeled: https://www.top-password.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/save-your-bitlocker-recovery-key.png https://www.top-password.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/10... Besides, the user also had a Windows laptop encrypted with Bitlocker, and the police failed to crack that one (see top comment).

Gasp0de 3y ago
I think you are mistaken, the original article in french states that the BitLocker computer was not cracked by the local police, but was accessed later by some cyber-department of the police: https://nantes.indymedia.org/posts/87395/une-lettre-divan-enferme-a-la-prison-de-villepinte-perquisitions-et-disques-durs-dechiffres/ https://nantes.indymedia.org/posts/87395/une-lettre-divan-en.... You are right that you can choose to backup recovery keys to the cloud, I just guessed that this would be one possible scenario.