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Long time ago TrueCrypt suddenly and abruptly shut down with a vague goodbye message saying "everyone please move on and use bitlocker instead" Prevailing theo
by akersten 5mo ago
Long time ago TrueCrypt suddenly and abruptly shut down with a vague goodbye message saying "everyone please move on and use bitlocker instead"
Prevailing theory is they were pressured to put in a backdoor and couldn't disclose it, so they had to make a seemingly ridiculous statement (because who in their right mind would trust bitlocker) to call attention that "something is very wrong"
- gruez 5mo ago>so they had to make a seemingly ridiculous statement (because who in their right mind would trust bitlocker) to call attention that "something is very wrong" Alternately, they don't want people to rely on abandonware for security. Also, despite the conspiracy theories of backdoors I'm not aware of any bitlocker exploits that work on TPM + pin, which is the intended "secure" configuration[1]. All exploits rely on TPM-only (ie. ez-mode), which is basically the security equivalent of running https/ssh without certificates and blindly accepting whatever keys shows up. [1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/operating-system-security/data-protection/bitlocker/planning-guide https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/operating...
- cubefox 5mo agoWhy do you need a separate PIN anyway? Shouldn't your Windows password be enough? Having to enter two different codes makes it unlikely a majority would use the system. I would be surprised if iOS or Android required a separate PIN for encryption.
- bootsmann 5mo agoYou need a separate pin because windows lives on the encrypted disk so you need to decrypt it before you can boot completely.
- rafram 5mo agomacOS solved this (and a lot of other problems) by putting the OS on a separate read-only partition - technically an APFS volume - that doesn’t get encrypted. Microsoft’s backwards-compatibility obsession might not let them make that the default, but they could at least make it an option.
- ranger_danger 5mo agoNot encrypting the OS means it's no longer considered FDE in my opinion. But Windows doesn't need the OS to decrypt a BitLocker volume anyway because the bootloader can do it... otherwise how could a FDE disk ever boot in the first place?
- rafram 5mo agoWhy not? The macOS OS partition is signed and read-only. Unless you disable SIP (which you shouldn't), your OS partition is bit-for-bit identical to everyone else's.
- ranger_danger 5mo ago> your OS partition is bit-for-bit identical to everyone else's Unless I want to change it... or have multiple OSes/partitions where I need the entire disk encrypted.
- cubefox 5mo agoCouldn't they just use the PIN also Windows password? Then the PIN screen would have to look like the Windows login screen.
- majorchord 5mo agowhat about systems with multiple users?
- ranger_danger 5mo agoWhose/Which Windows password? The OS is inherently multi-user. Plus if you ever needed to change or reset your password, that complicates the encryption.
- cubefox 5mo agoOn the other hand, Microsoft has thousands of SWEs, surely a few of them must be smart enough to figure this out.
- dist-epoch 5mo agoseems like nobody here knows the history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux