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Deniability and Duress

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Re: Deniability and Duress

#101

Post by angry_octet »

afandian wrote: post #36

I travel to the US semi-regularly. I never have trouble. Though it's a shame to have to mention it, I was born in the UK and have white skin. My colleague, who was also born in the UK but has darker skin, was detained for half an hour last time we crossed the border. I'm a classic "nothing to hide". But I am seriously considering taking no electronics with me next time I cross the border. Might make work more of a ha…

You'll be flagged as someone who has something to hide because you had no phone. Just get a travel phone and another set of accounts (email/fb), use them occasionally, take some silly instagram photos of dogs/face swaps/food and you're done.

Re: Deniability and Duress

#102

Post by usefulcat »

ianferrel wrote: post #81
rattray wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you (or others) elaborate here?

Truecrypt is a (now discontinued) encryption program that allowed you to nest encrypted containers within one another in a way that if you provided Password1, it would open Container1, and if you provided Password2, it would open Container2. Since the Container's full size was allocated at creation, and the size of the contents cannot be determined without the key, this gave plausible deniability. You could keep your…

Side note: TrueCrypt lives on as VeraCrypt.

Re: Deniability and Duress

#103

Post by angry_octet »

ansible wrote: post #70
Veratyr wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android still does have user profiles. On Nougat, go to Settings -> Users. You can add profiles and associate a different lock with each (haven't tried fingerprints). Each has different sets of app data and switching between them is kinda obscure if you don't know what to do. Just need to switch user before you get off the plane.

Yes, this is the way to go. You have to give the thugs something... or else they'll keep after you until you do. So you have to give them some boring but credible data. Wiping the phone is suspicious. There needs to be a way to unlock the phone at a moment's notice via either profile. And there shouldn't be an easy way to see if there is another profile on the phone.

If you're phone is android and FDE is unlocked they can plug it in to a device which will rip everything off. It's quite fast. Everything is then searched for keywords, contact phone numbers matched against ones of interest, etc. Best just to have a plain phone and restore from the cloud.

Re: Deniability and Duress

#104

Post by stinkytaco »

DennisP wrote: post #99
stinkytaco wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using the ledger as a wallet? Doesn't plugging the device into an untrusted PC worry you at all? Leaving all that aside, the biggest issue for me an u2f is the mobile problem I have a yubikey neo, but u2f does not work over nfc, so I'm still stuck creating application passwords for things.

The Ledger is designed to plug into an untrusted PC, that's the whole point. It's running secure hardware and never reveals the private key. It also has a display that tells you how much you're sending and to what address, so you're protected even if you have spyware that attempts to spoof those parameters. According to Yubikey, "All YubiKey NEO devices manufactured as of February 10, 2015 supported the current FIDO…

You're correct, but the implementation is limited. Chrome supports it, I think via Google Authenticator, but even their Gmail app doesn't support it directly. Nor does Dropbox, which are my primary two use cases. I highly doubt most other apps do either. The Google Authenticator support is a step, but it really needs to move to "enter password, tap token" in any app to really be useful.

Re: Deniability and Duress

#106

Post by mirimir »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #28
mirimir wrote: post #9

The worst thing to do, when facing rubber hoses, or legalistic equivalents thereof, is to lie. Especially if you're not a well-trained lier. And especially if there may be independent evidence that would trip you up. The best option is having nothing to hide. When crossing hazardous borders, sensitive stuff should be securely in the cloud. And when coercion is likely, a third party should control access to it.

> securely in the cloud isn't this a contradiction? Given how the NSA and co have backdoors in the cloud and such, and can order the operators of said cloud service to release information from their users. If you have sensitive stuff, best not to cross any borders I'd say. Stay away from the US.

Here's a simple hack. Anonymously lease N inexpensive VPS. Archive your stuff (perhaps a VM) with tar, encrypt with gpg, and use split to get N pieces. Use bbcp to put distinct subsets of pieces on each VPS, such that any M of the N VPS will give your stuff back.

Re: Deniability and Duress

#107

Post by mirimir »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #91
loup-vaillant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure we can think of a "double lock" feature, where you allow a friend to lock you out of your account. There's even an easy local solution: encrypt your data with a friend's public key (sealed box in libsodium parlance). It may be seized and intercepted, but you can't possibly decrypt it. That's probably the kind of scheme Snowden used when he arranged his inability to decrypt his NSA data even if captured and t…

The really bad people, are probably at that point going torture you just to make an example of you to discourage others from doing the same.

Yeah, that's the downside of carrying stuff that you can't decrypt. They won't believe you, and won't stop until you decrypt it. Better is not to have anything sensitive with you.

Re: Deniability and Duress

#109

Post by SilasX »

kilotaras wrote: post #94
SilasX wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't it a non-trivial problem to generate plausible fake data?

Truecrypt didn't generate fake date, you (the user) did. E.g. put porn on "show to thugs" partition and "Death star plans" on "true" encrypted partition.

Yeah, I know. My point is that it's hard to generate a plausible alternate dataset for something like that.

"So, the decrypted hard drive says that you used the computer exactly once to put pornography on the computer and then never use it again ..."

Re: Deniability and Duress

#110

Post by rl3 »

monochromatic wrote: post #100
rl3 wrote: post #27

Any solution that has to maintain plausible deniability must be resistant to automated forensic exploitation suites commonly sold to law enforcement. The pre-boot authentication phase is far harder to attack than an operating system that has already booted, so the only solution I can see is a typical hidden volume setup with two independent operating systems. The capability needs to be baked into both iOS and Android…

> It has zero national security value I'm against it too, but of course it has more than zero national security value.

How so?

Unless a terrorist or spy is exceptionally stupid, they're not going to be carrying anything of value on their phone through a border checkpoint.

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