5 ms·

For disk encryption on Windows, I switched to Bitlocker for my personal use. At my workplace we use Symantec Encryption and Sophos Safeguard, my understanding i

by pliu 12y ago

For disk encryption on Windows, I switched to Bitlocker for my personal use. At my workplace we use Symantec Encryption and Sophos Safeguard, my understanding is they are both pretty okay. For file encryption, now I just do everything on my Ubuntu workstation and use GPG + tarballs. This is sort of a pain in the ass though, and it's not as secure as a TC container of course. It's kind of just a stop gap until I can think of something better.

tux 12y ago
You think BitLocker closed-source from Micrsofot is more secure and trust worthy then open-source fork CipherShed ? I would take open-source project over closed-source any day. Linux Action Show recently talked about "Tomb", it looks like a nice alternative. https://www.dyne.org/software/tomb/ https://www.dyne.org/software/tomb/
- pyre 12y ago
  It's possible for a closed-source product to be written by experts, while the open-source competitor is only written by hobbyists. When it comes to crypto, you probably want the experts. Also, someone needs to actually audit the source code for the 'open-source' part to really come into play (other than from the discontinuation of support angle). Even with open source code, it's only really been recently that TrueCrypt itself ever got any sort of in-depth audit.
  - whyever 12y ago
    Do you think the closed-source crypto did get any sort of audit? From what I gather, crypto experts are strongly opposed to closed-source crypto.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      You gather that from exactly which crypto experts? Yes: Bitlocker was audited. No company in the world spends more on audits, and is more sophisticated in sourcing them, than Microsoft.
      - caf 12y ago
        What information have Microsoft released about the Bitlocker audit(s)? I couldn't find any, although my search wasn't particularly thorough. It seems to me that the value of an audit, for third parties, is that the auditor puts their reputation behind it.
        tptacek 12y ago
        That happens in a statistically negligible number of audits, and most especially in the best cryptographic audits. Which systems has Cryptography Research audited? Answer: you have no idea.
        caf 12y ago
        I don't doubt that, but no doubt a great deal of cryptographic audits are produced entirely for internal consumption at the procuring party, and another large chunk of them would be for bespoke software development gigs where the audit is for the benefit of the single customer. Audits (and here I use the word in its expansive sense) that are intended to build confidence in a large or public audience do tend to be made public.
        tptacek 12y ago
        If that's true, it should be easy to cite audits of important software conducted by well-known cryptography engineering firms. So, tell me: where's the audit of OpenSSL, or SChannel, or NSS, done by Cryptography Research or Riscure? Where's the PGP audit? The LUKS audit? Can I ask where you came by these opinions of how security audits work? I know where I came by mine.
        caf 12y ago
        When I say "the expansive sense" I am not referring to the specific case of security audits. For an example of what I mean, in terms of an audit intended to build confidence in a large audience, this was published in last year's annual report for News Corporation: The Board of Directors and Shareholders of News Corporation: We have audited the accompanying consolidated and combined balance sheets of News Corporation as of June 30, 2013 and 2012, and the related consolidated and combined statements of operations, comprehensive (loss) income, equity, and cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended June 30, 2013. These financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on these financial statements based on our audits. We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States). Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement. We were not engaged to perform an audit of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting. Our audits included consideration of internal control over financial reporting as a basis for designing audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion. An audit also includes examining, on a test basis, evidence supporting the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements, assessing the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, and evaluating the overall financial statement presentation. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion. In our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the consolidated and combined financial position of News Corporation at June 30, 2013 and 2012, and the consolidated and combined results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended June 30, 2013, in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. /s/ Ernst & Young LLP New York, New York September 20, 2013 I do not believe the lack of a public security audit of OpenSSL, SChannel, NSS, PGP or LUKS indicates anything other than that either no-one cares enough about building public confidence in those projects to fund such an audit, or that anyone who has is sitting on the results because they weren't good.
  - grrowl 12y ago
    It's just as possible for a closed-source product to be written by hobbyists of the field. You're placing your trust in Microsoft employees requiring proper credentials from the engineers, and not just taking the guy who was free and involved in the Word 2007 document encryption
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Bitlocker wasn't written by hobbyists. Ironically, Truecrypt probably was. But if you'd like a more certain comparison, look at the Linux encrypted filesystems to see how amateurish mainstream open-source crypto can be.
      - xorcist 12y ago
        I take it you mean LUKS/dm_crypt, which is what has any real world use. Could you elaborate? Amateurish good, amateurish bad?
        pyre 12y ago
        eCryptfs has a lot of use right now. It's what (e.g.) Ubuntu uses to implement secure home directories. It's not a block filesystem, but it is a filesystem. (You mount it on a directory; it's just backed by a directory of encrypted files) IIRC, there has been criticism of the implementation, and possibly the design. This may be what is referred to. There are also things like EncFS, too. I'm not sure what the view of some of these other filesystems are from a cryptologist point-of-view.
        tptacek 12y ago
        Pedantic, but important: there's no such thing as a "block filesystem". There is encryption performed at the level of a filesystem, and encryption performed at the level of a hardware device (schemes like Truecrypt are, in fact, simulating hardware disk encryption). It's a little ironic that encrypted filesystem implementations on Linux are so bad, because the filesystem is a much better layer at which to perform encryption than the device itself.
  - Tomte 12y ago
    In the case of Bitlocker we know that Niels Ferguson is behind it. The name might ring a bell.
    - guiambros 12y ago
      http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Ferguson http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Ferguson Niels T. Ferguson (born 10 December 1965, Eindhoven) is a Dutch cryptographer and consultant who currently works for Microsoft. He has worked with others, including Bruce Schneier, designing cryptographic algorithms, testing algorithms and protocols, and writing papers and books. Among the designs Ferguson has contributed to is the AES finalist block cipher algorithm Twofish as well as the stream cipher Helix and the Skein hash function. ... In 2001, he claimed to have broken the HDCP system that is incorporated into HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs players, similar to the DVDs Content Scramble System, but has not published his research, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which would make such publication illegal. At the CRYPTO 2007 conference ... Niels Ferguson and Dan Shumow presented an informal paper describing a potential backdoor in the NIST specified Dual_EC_DRBG cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator. The backdoor was confirmed to be real in 2013 as part of the Edward Snowden leaks.
- Tomte 12y ago
  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/si_team/archive/2006/03/02/542590.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/si_team/archive/2006/03/02/542590.as... Is that absolute proof? No. Is it better than some unknown guy claiming whatever? I think yes. YMMV.
  - Nux 12y ago
    All crypto software is guilty until proven innocent, but BitLocker is fine, that guy who wrote the blog post is sure about it. Made by Microsoft and closed source, how could I not trust it.
- TD-Linux 12y ago
  Giving that you're running a closed source OS, you are pretty much out of luck anyway.
imaginenore 12y ago
Using Bitlocker over open source software makes zero sense. Thanks to Snowden we know for a fact that Microsoft backdoored many of their products and gave access to NSA. I would be shocked if Bitlocker doesn't have a backdoor.
- Zikes 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
  - alister 12y ago
    tl;dr: The crypto component of Windows was discovered to have a 1024-bit public key embedded within it whose symbol name is _NSAKEY. The "obvious" assumption was that this permits the NSA to read, sign, or authenticate anything for Windows. Microsoft denies this and says that "we have not shared this key with the NSA or any other party". I remember when this story first broke. I thought it would lead to major embarrassment and repercussions for Microsoft. Boy was I wrong. There was no news coverage; other than a small subset of techies, nobody was concerned; and as far as I know, Microsoft never gave a technical explanation of how it was intended to be used.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      There was no news coverage because virtually no expert in the field believes it to have been an NSA backdoor. The arguments suggesting it is were debunked by Bruce Schneier more than a decade ago. Among them, the obvious: Microsoft held the other key, the "non-NSAKEY" key, and could do anything that the NSAKEY can do. If NSA can coerce Microsoft into adding a whole new signing key, it could just as easily have coerced Microsoft into signing things with Microsoft's own key. Given that, an "NSAKEY" backdoor is irrational. In promoting the notion that "NSAKEY" is a backdoor, you're lining up against the likes of Bruce Schneier and lining up alongside the likes of WorldNetDaily, which is indeed among the top Google search results for [NSAKEY backdoor].
- tacotime 12y ago
  I also shudder at the thought of Bitlocker being the de facto standard for the average American's crypto needs. Microsoft is consistently the first to kneel before any and every demand of the NSA at the behest of their board members. Skype is a prime example. They were willfully deceptive about their ability to collect and record calls and metadata on the Skype network. Microsoft started working on integrating the NSA's PRISM into skype 8 months before they even purchased it. Well, that or they bought it with full knowledge of the PRISM integration and active deception and never planned to mention it to the public until the Snowden leaks forced their hand. Of course they say they only ever took action in accordance with their legal obligations and only after careful review, but their actions would appear to speak for themselves IMO. Bitlocker is no different from Skype. It's probably fine if you're trying to protect yourself from the prying eyes of an average citizen but it is also probably entirely useless against someone with enough influence and/or connection to the government's secret ops. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...
blueskin_ 12y ago
Bitlocker is a bad idea. http://randomoracle.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/all-your-keys-are-belong-to-us-windows-8-1-bitlocker-and-key-escrow/ http://randomoracle.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/all-your-keys-a...
- tptacek 12y ago
  This is a blog post that points out that you can back up your keys in a Microsoft online account, among several other options. You've managed to condense it to "Bitlocker is a bad idea". Which leaves me to wonder whether you actually read the piece.
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    Seems the source has been 1984'd, but a while ago there were leaked Microsoft internal slides about how they store everyone's bitlocker key.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      They store the keys of people who give them their keys. Microsoft's code is the most heavily reverse engineered in the industry. It's 2014, not 1995; you can't summon a "closed source" boogieman to win arguments about what they do and don't do.

by pliu 12y ago

tux 12y ago

You think BitLocker closed-source from Micrsofot is more secure and trust worthy then open-source fork CipherShed ? I would take open-source project over closed-source any day. Linux Action Show recently talked about "Tomb", it looks like a nice alternative. https://www.dyne.org/software/tomb/ https://www.dyne.org/software/tomb/

pyre 12y ago
It's possible for a closed-source product to be written by experts, while the open-source competitor is only written by hobbyists. When it comes to crypto, you probably want the experts. Also, someone needs to actually audit the source code for the 'open-source' part to really come into play (other than from the discontinuation of support angle). Even with open source code, it's only really been recently that TrueCrypt itself ever got any sort of in-depth audit.
- whyever 12y ago
  Do you think the closed-source crypto did get any sort of audit? From what I gather, crypto experts are strongly opposed to closed-source crypto.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    You gather that from exactly which crypto experts? Yes: Bitlocker was audited. No company in the world spends more on audits, and is more sophisticated in sourcing them, than Microsoft.
    - caf 12y ago
      What information have Microsoft released about the Bitlocker audit(s)? I couldn't find any, although my search wasn't particularly thorough. It seems to me that the value of an audit, for third parties, is that the auditor puts their reputation behind it.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        That happens in a statistically negligible number of audits, and most especially in the best cryptographic audits. Which systems has Cryptography Research audited? Answer: you have no idea.
        caf 12y ago
        I don't doubt that, but no doubt a great deal of cryptographic audits are produced entirely for internal consumption at the procuring party, and another large chunk of them would be for bespoke software development gigs where the audit is for the benefit of the single customer. Audits (and here I use the word in its expansive sense) that are intended to build confidence in a large or public audience do tend to be made public.
        tptacek 12y ago
        If that's true, it should be easy to cite audits of important software conducted by well-known cryptography engineering firms. So, tell me: where's the audit of OpenSSL, or SChannel, or NSS, done by Cryptography Research or Riscure? Where's the PGP audit? The LUKS audit? Can I ask where you came by these opinions of how security audits work? I know where I came by mine.
        caf 12y ago
        When I say "the expansive sense" I am not referring to the specific case of security audits. For an example of what I mean, in terms of an audit intended to build confidence in a large audience, this was published in last year's annual report for News Corporation: The Board of Directors and Shareholders of News Corporation: We have audited the accompanying consolidated and combined balance sheets of News Corporation as of June 30, 2013 and 2012, and the related consolidated and combined statements of operations, comprehensive (loss) income, equity, and cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended June 30, 2013. These financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on these financial statements based on our audits. We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States). Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement. We were not engaged to perform an audit of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting. Our audits included consideration of internal control over financial reporting as a basis for designing audit procedures that are appropriate in the circumstances, but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion. An audit also includes examining, on a test basis, evidence supporting the amounts and disclosures in the financial statements, assessing the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, and evaluating the overall financial statement presentation. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion. In our opinion, the financial statements referred to above present fairly, in all material respects, the consolidated and combined financial position of News Corporation at June 30, 2013 and 2012, and the consolidated and combined results of its operations and its cash flows for each of the three years in the period ended June 30, 2013, in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. /s/ Ernst & Young LLP New York, New York September 20, 2013 I do not believe the lack of a public security audit of OpenSSL, SChannel, NSS, PGP or LUKS indicates anything other than that either no-one cares enough about building public confidence in those projects to fund such an audit, or that anyone who has is sitting on the results because they weren't good.
- grrowl 12y ago
  It's just as possible for a closed-source product to be written by hobbyists of the field. You're placing your trust in Microsoft employees requiring proper credentials from the engineers, and not just taking the guy who was free and involved in the Word 2007 document encryption
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Bitlocker wasn't written by hobbyists. Ironically, Truecrypt probably was. But if you'd like a more certain comparison, look at the Linux encrypted filesystems to see how amateurish mainstream open-source crypto can be.
    - xorcist 12y ago
      I take it you mean LUKS/dm_crypt, which is what has any real world use. Could you elaborate? Amateurish good, amateurish bad?
      - pyre 12y ago
        eCryptfs has a lot of use right now. It's what (e.g.) Ubuntu uses to implement secure home directories. It's not a block filesystem, but it is a filesystem. (You mount it on a directory; it's just backed by a directory of encrypted files) IIRC, there has been criticism of the implementation, and possibly the design. This may be what is referred to. There are also things like EncFS, too. I'm not sure what the view of some of these other filesystems are from a cryptologist point-of-view.
        tptacek 12y ago
        Pedantic, but important: there's no such thing as a "block filesystem". There is encryption performed at the level of a filesystem, and encryption performed at the level of a hardware device (schemes like Truecrypt are, in fact, simulating hardware disk encryption). It's a little ironic that encrypted filesystem implementations on Linux are so bad, because the filesystem is a much better layer at which to perform encryption than the device itself.
- Tomte 12y ago
  In the case of Bitlocker we know that Niels Ferguson is behind it. The name might ring a bell.
  - guiambros 12y ago
    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Ferguson http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Ferguson Niels T. Ferguson (born 10 December 1965, Eindhoven) is a Dutch cryptographer and consultant who currently works for Microsoft. He has worked with others, including Bruce Schneier, designing cryptographic algorithms, testing algorithms and protocols, and writing papers and books. Among the designs Ferguson has contributed to is the AES finalist block cipher algorithm Twofish as well as the stream cipher Helix and the Skein hash function. ... In 2001, he claimed to have broken the HDCP system that is incorporated into HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs players, similar to the DVDs Content Scramble System, but has not published his research, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which would make such publication illegal. At the CRYPTO 2007 conference ... Niels Ferguson and Dan Shumow presented an informal paper describing a potential backdoor in the NIST specified Dual_EC_DRBG cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator. The backdoor was confirmed to be real in 2013 as part of the Edward Snowden leaks.
Tomte 12y ago
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/si_team/archive/2006/03/02/542590.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/si_team/archive/2006/03/02/542590.as... Is that absolute proof? No. Is it better than some unknown guy claiming whatever? I think yes. YMMV.
- Nux 12y ago
  All crypto software is guilty until proven innocent, but BitLocker is fine, that guy who wrote the blog post is sure about it. Made by Microsoft and closed source, how could I not trust it.
TD-Linux 12y ago
Giving that you're running a closed source OS, you are pretty much out of luck anyway.

imaginenore 12y ago

Using Bitlocker over open source software makes zero sense. Thanks to Snowden we know for a fact that Microsoft backdoored many of their products and gave access to NSA. I would be shocked if Bitlocker doesn't have a backdoor.

Zikes 12y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
- alister 12y ago
  tl;dr: The crypto component of Windows was discovered to have a 1024-bit public key embedded within it whose symbol name is _NSAKEY. The "obvious" assumption was that this permits the NSA to read, sign, or authenticate anything for Windows. Microsoft denies this and says that "we have not shared this key with the NSA or any other party". I remember when this story first broke. I thought it would lead to major embarrassment and repercussions for Microsoft. Boy was I wrong. There was no news coverage; other than a small subset of techies, nobody was concerned; and as far as I know, Microsoft never gave a technical explanation of how it was intended to be used.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    There was no news coverage because virtually no expert in the field believes it to have been an NSA backdoor. The arguments suggesting it is were debunked by Bruce Schneier more than a decade ago. Among them, the obvious: Microsoft held the other key, the "non-NSAKEY" key, and could do anything that the NSAKEY can do. If NSA can coerce Microsoft into adding a whole new signing key, it could just as easily have coerced Microsoft into signing things with Microsoft's own key. Given that, an "NSAKEY" backdoor is irrational. In promoting the notion that "NSAKEY" is a backdoor, you're lining up against the likes of Bruce Schneier and lining up alongside the likes of WorldNetDaily, which is indeed among the top Google search results for [NSAKEY backdoor].
tacotime 12y ago
I also shudder at the thought of Bitlocker being the de facto standard for the average American's crypto needs. Microsoft is consistently the first to kneel before any and every demand of the NSA at the behest of their board members. Skype is a prime example. They were willfully deceptive about their ability to collect and record calls and metadata on the Skype network. Microsoft started working on integrating the NSA's PRISM into skype 8 months before they even purchased it. Well, that or they bought it with full knowledge of the PRISM integration and active deception and never planned to mention it to the public until the Snowden leaks forced their hand. Of course they say they only ever took action in accordance with their legal obligations and only after careful review, but their actions would appear to speak for themselves IMO. Bitlocker is no different from Skype. It's probably fine if you're trying to protect yourself from the prying eyes of an average citizen but it is also probably entirely useless against someone with enough influence and/or connection to the government's secret ops. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...

blueskin_ 12y ago

Bitlocker is a bad idea. http://randomoracle.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/all-your-keys-are-belong-to-us-windows-8-1-bitlocker-and-key-escrow/ http://randomoracle.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/all-your-keys-a...

tptacek 12y ago
This is a blog post that points out that you can back up your keys in a Microsoft online account, among several other options. You've managed to condense it to "Bitlocker is a bad idea". Which leaves me to wonder whether you actually read the piece.
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Seems the source has been 1984'd, but a while ago there were leaked Microsoft internal slides about how they store everyone's bitlocker key.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    They store the keys of people who give them their keys. Microsoft's code is the most heavily reverse engineered in the industry. It's 2014, not 1995; you can't summon a "closed source" boogieman to win arguments about what they do and don't do.