7 ms·
Using it for a few years now, and I'd hesitate not one bit to recommend. It's not as "technical" as said in comments either tbh. But us in HN are not qualified
by Ayesh 3y ago
Using it for a few years now, and I'd hesitate not one bit to recommend. It's not as "technical" as said in comments either tbh. But us in HN are not qualified to call it non tech friendly I guess.
Performance is great, nearly "metal" SSD speeds. I use it with a hidden partition of an external HDD, and works great too, once I got Windows to stop asking me to formally that partition.
The only feature I wish it could have is better Yubikey (and alike) integration. I can use those static passwords as an encryption key, but I'd need something better.
- _d3Xt3r_ 3y ago> Performance is great, nearly "metal" SSD speeds. But how does that compare exactly, performance wise, against Bitlocker and LUKS? (assuming similar strength encryption algorithms are selected)
- Ayesh 3y agoI haven't used BitLocker or anything else, so I can't really compare. Veracrypt has a neat benchmark tool so you know the speed beforehand. I suppose most CPUs have native support for the popular algorithms, so the bottleneck really is the disk, not CPU itself or the software.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pulse7 3y agoThere is still an open issue in VeraCrypt (https://github.com/veracrypt/VeraCrypt/issues/136 https://github.com/veracrypt/VeraCrypt/issues/136) because of which BitLocker is much faster on SSDs then VeraCrypt... But if you don't need those speads, VeraCrypt is still great...
- huhtenberg 3y agoTo nitpick - on _NVmE_ drives, not SSDs. The principal difference is the native speed of raw IO - NVmEs are an order of magnitude faster than SSDs. TC/VC don't use hardware acceleration, so all the encryption work falls on the CPU. On a machine with a reasonably modern CPU, TC/VC run nearly at drive's native speed.
- seanw444 3y ago> TC/VC don't use hardware acceleration I assume by that you mean it doesn't use the AES instructions? That's odd to me.
- fluoridation 3y agoNo, that's wrong. VeraCrypt uses AES-NI when available. It seems the source of the issue is the IO design of the driver, which causes unnecessary context switches when operating on a raw device.
- seanw444 3y agoOkay that makes more sense.
- Ms-J 3y agoYou can also explicitly disable the AES-NI in Veracrypt and use pure software implementation if you don't trust the hardware. I usually enable this option.
- zeroimpl 3y agoThis option always seems funny to me. If I didn't trust the AES-NI instruction, why I would I trust the XOR instruction?
- seanw444 3y agoYou could probably imagine the possibility of state actors and Intel, for example, conspiring to backdoor AES instructions of specific targets. Maybe possible with the IME. Not accusing them of this, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. The only things using the AES instructions are important data needing to be encrypted. On the other hand, trying to backdoor XOR would give you an astronomically higher amount of white noise. Finding important data mixed in with all the other things a computer XORs would be much harder.
- baxuz 3y agoBitlocker is Microsoft's closed-source product. How can you be sure it doesn't have backdoors?
- shim__ 3y agoThat question is pointless if you're using windows
- huhtenberg 3y agoIn practice, it is most certainly not pointless. Given two USB drives, one encrypted with BitLocker and another with TC or VC, chances of master key recovery by Microsoft are definitely not the same.
- maccard 3y ago> In practice, it is most certainly not pointless .... chances of master key recovery by Microsoft are definitely not the same. I don't think those two sentences hold water when put together. In practice, if your risk is master key leakage and theft of the encrypted data by microsoft, you shouldn't be using windows. If you suspect that, MS can have a kernel mode driver masquerading as anything else, and it can just siphon your master key whenever you enter it.
- DarkmSparks 3y agoAnd now that ms auth is apparently mostly compromised, extend microsoft to any threat actor in the wild. I like VC for the portability of the encrypted .tc files. Keep all my backups as tc files, and recovered from more than one failure using them. Once had an issue where dropbox corrupted the duplicates, so dont use dropbox anymore.
- Jerrrry 3y ago>ms auth is apparently mostly compromised just gonna drop that like that aint a $10k+ implication, gonna need a src or ref thanks unless you mean by 3letters, which dont exactly give their backdoors to randoms. randoms aint coming across 3letter's backdoors, not active/modern ones anyway
- RockRobotRock 3y agoFunctionally, how could anything be better than a static password?
- Ayesh 3y agoI meant the long static passwords Yubikeys "type" when you touch the button when plugged in. It's just a static long text that has no context.
- RockRobotRock 3y agoSorry, I know what you mean. I'm saying anything like challenge-response would still be a password functionally if you're decrypting a static file.
- wannacboatmovie 3y agoBitLocker and LUKS both support TPM for key storage which VeraCrypt does not. The TPM acts as a second factor (assume PIN is required); if you pulled the disk out and placed it another PC you cannot brute force the plaintext password, even using the $5 wrench method.
- hexfish 3y agoI would be very careful with placing my trust in TPM: https://www.secura.com/blog/tpm-sniffing-attacks-against-non-bitlocker-targets https://www.secura.com/blog/tpm-sniffing-attacks-against-non....
- KAMSPioneer 3y agoYour parent comment said he was assuming a PIN was used to seal the TPM, and the attacking the link would have failed if the TPM had a PIN set, no? I agree though that using a TPM without a PIN gives little in the way of data protection. Not nothing, but little.
- nuker 3y agoSniffing the bus can be defeated by using encrypted comms. It is disabled by Windows for some reason, but it works as designed in other secure boot implementations. I hope :)
- Reviving1514 3y agoI've seen reports of corrupted files and that has always stopped me from using it. I even paid for the Android app just to support them. Is file corruption still an issue?
- kristofferg 3y agoIme. not more than any other encryption tool. Just don’t skip or delay those backups.
- Ayesh 3y ago> still Never had problems. FWIW, I'm using AES/256 bit keys/HMAC SHA-512 on all of my volumes.
- aeyes 3y ago> I can use those static passwords as an encryption key, but I'd need something better. I use static password plus a keyfile. Since the keyfile can be anything you can use something innocent looking which you just have laying around on the machine, like a picture.
- sangnoir 3y ago> you can use something innocent looking which you just have laying around on the machine, like a picture. This works well on a file you decrypt often. What can happen with infrequently used files is that many years pass, you upgrade computers and/or operating systems, remember to copy your encrypted volumes. When you try to decrypt your volume, you remember the passcode, but forget which "innocuous" file you used as a keyfile, even after you boot up your old computer you had handed down to your cousin.
- aeyes 3y agoWell, the same happens to me with passwords which I don't use for a long time. You can use any file, even something you can quickly download from the Internet. Like the Windows 3.11 file manager icon or your favorite Linux torrent. Only the first 1024 bytes are used so be careful with file types which have a big header.
- somat 3y agoIf you can make a key file You can put it on a removable sd card and make a keydrive. This introduces a nice air gap to the key, only needing to be broken when unlocking the drive. There are better ways, often the the key can be stored on a hardware token(yubi key etc... ). which presumably offers additional security guarantees around copying the key. but a keydrive is a very easy way to start. Off tangent(I doubt you will be using openbsd), but the openbsd encryption layer offers some nice features around using keydrives, http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#softraidFDE http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#softraidFDE