A very interesting solution! If you can do without Windows, I would say formatting a USB with a first partition as an 8 gig DOS partition and a 2nd partition as Linux LUKS may work just a good. But a few people may know about Linux. So if on OpenBSD, you can create a second OpenBSD encrypted partition. I think that will probably look like garbage to 99.999% of the people you may be hiding from. Be aware, if dealing w…
Hmm, a partition of any sort has mapped the territory.
My USB Drive Has a Hidden Encrypted Vault
151–160 of 175 posts
Re: My USB Drive Has a Hidden Encrypted Vault
#152A very interesting solution! If you can do without Windows, I would say formatting a USB with a first partition as an 8 gig DOS partition and a 2nd partition as Linux LUKS may work just a good. But a few people may know about Linux. So if on OpenBSD, you can create a second OpenBSD encrypted partition. I think that will probably look like garbage to 99.999% of the people you may be hiding from. Be aware, if dealing w…
But this partition would be visible. The OP had a version that is invisible.
But the big question would the guards even know about fdisk type utilities ?
Re: My USB Drive Has a Hidden Encrypted Vault
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I was building a black box to detect hidden data on a USB stick, I'd include a feature whereby it measures power consumption and flags USB drives that don't consume the expected power for that type of drive.
laughs in that flash drive I have that just gets hot instead of working
Re: My USB Drive Has a Hidden Encrypted Vault
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
If there's a difference visible, that's a weakness in the encryption algorithm. Encrypted data should be statistically indistinct from random noise. It's an information theory thing. Everything in the ciphertext should be sitting at maximum entropy.
Try it for yourself brother, there is a plainly obvious difference between the random noise of writing garbage compared to a properly encrypted binary. There are even statistically measurable differences in the garbage written across versions of a tool or OS, which, unlike the invented scenario above, has been successfully used to place a time window on when exactly someone destroyed evidence.
"Garbage" isn't the same thing as random noise.
I have looked at the entropy graphs of encrypted data commonly. It's one of the first things I look at when looking at a new firmware image I haven't seen before.
Re: My USB Drive Has a Hidden Encrypted Vault
#155I want something like this in a keyboard: a completely hidden drive that the OS cannot see until I type in a certain string of characters (password) to activate it with a separate string of characters to deactivate it.
Re: My USB Drive Has a Hidden Encrypted Vault
#156Re: My USB Drive Has a Hidden Encrypted Vault
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless they disassemble this drive, a forensic dump will only show the open partition.
A cursory X-Ray would show the internal SD. This product needs a hardware re-design (which I've seen other projects do) to have onboard flash instead. Saying that, any proper investigation would read the firmware from the flash and identify the decryption routing anyway
Re: My USB Drive Has a Hidden Encrypted Vault
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of FAT32, use the flash drive mapping. Flash drive contain mapping from sectors to blocks. This is used to deal with flash erasure, wear leveling, and failures. Custom firmware could map the real filesystem to bad blocks. Does the forensic software read the whole physical flash drive or just the logical one? They might if they want to get deleted files. Can they detect that there are lots of failures?
You need the wear levelling system for actual wear leveling, otherwise the drive won't last very long. Competent forensic analysis can check the firmware and the physical flash contents, although most forensic analysis is not especially competent.
You can ship my genius award to me at X..x>X..X.
Re: My USB Drive Has a Hidden Encrypted Vault
#159Can someone explain to me how this project is different than a Veracrypt hidden volume and also what he means that Veracrypt wouldn't help if you are assumed to be guilty? I thought Veracrypt hidden volumes aren't visible.
Re: My USB Drive Has a Hidden Encrypted Vault
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is self-soothing, not a real security plan. It doesn't matter how competent a security agency is, because there's a whole ecosystem of vendors selling into that space; knowledge of how to attack encrypted disks like this is outsourced, and, importantly, those firms have incentives to mop up even random stuff like this, because vendors will be selected in part based on lists of how many different circumvention an…
This isn't stand-up-to-state-actors security. This is keep-state-actors-from-noticing security. They know you're guilty, they'll get it. The XKCD version of password cracking works no matter how secure your hardware. But while states realistically can crack most anything it doesn't mean they can crack *every*thing. There are simply too many flash drives crossing the border every day. But there is a big flaw I see: 8g…