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Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates

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Re: Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates

#151

Post by AnthonyMouse »

whatevaa wrote: post #136
arcfour wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree on the Secure Boot front. It's necessary for FDE to have any sort of practical security, it reduces malicious/vulnerable driver abuse (making it nontrivial), bootkits are a security nightmare and would otherwise be much more common in malware typical users encounter, and ultimately the user can control their secure boot setup and enroll their own keys if they wish. Does that mean that Microsoft do…

Full disk encryption protects from somebody yanking a hard drive from running server (actually happens) or stealing a laptop. Calling it useless because it doesn't match your threat model... I hate todays security people, can't threat model for shit.

> Full disk encryption protects from somebody yanking a hard drive from running server (actually happens) or stealing a laptop.

Both of these are super easy to solve without secure boot: The device uses FDE and the key is provided over the network during boot, in the laptop case after the user provides a password. Doing it this way is significantly more secure than using a TPM because the network can stop providing the key as soon as the device is stolen and then the key was never in non-volatile storage anywhere on the device and can't be extracted from a powered off device even with physical access and specialized equipment.

Re: Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates

#152

Post by valeriozen »

We are seeing the dark side of "Security as a Service". When Microsoft simplifies the signing pipeline (like with Trusted Signing), they also centralize the point of failure. The fact that a FOSS pillar like VeraCrypt can be sidelined due to what looks like an automated account flagging issue with no path to human arbitration shows that the current system is too fragile for critical infrastructure. Secure Boot is a great security feature, but it shouldnt be used as a tool for vendor lock in through administrative incompetence

Re: Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates

#153

Post by mschuster91 »

VadimPR wrote: post #113
riedel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of a central signing authority for open source. While this might go against the spirit of open source, I think it eventually creates a critical mass and outcry if Microsoft or Google would play games with them. Also foundations might be a good way to protect against legal trouble distributing OSS under different regulations. I am imagining e.g. an FDroid that plays Googles game. With reproducible or a…

If someone is willing to put in the work in governance, FOSS projects would be willing to fund it - at least Mudlet would be. We get income from Patreon to cover the costs.

There is ossign.org, Certum offers a cheap certificate for FOSS [1], and Comodo offers relatively cheap (but still expensive) certs as well [2]. Not affiliated with either service, but these are the ones I remember last time I had to dig into this mess, so there might be even more services that I don't recall at the moment.

[1] https://shop.certum.eu/open-source-code-signing.html

[2] https://comodosslstore.com/code-signing/comodo-individual-co...

Re: Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates

#154

Post by tremon »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #151
whatevaa wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full disk encryption protects from somebody yanking a hard drive from running server (actually happens) or stealing a laptop. Calling it useless because it doesn't match your threat model... I hate todays security people, can't threat model for shit.

> Full disk encryption protects from somebody yanking a hard drive from running server (actually happens) or stealing a laptop. Both of these are super easy to solve without secure boot: The device uses FDE and the key is provided over the network during boot, in the laptop case after the user provides a password. Doing it this way is significantly more secure than using a TPM because the network can stop providing t…

> the device uses FDE and the key is provided over the network during boot

An example of such an implementation, since well before TPMs were commonplace: https://www.recompile.se/mandos

Re: Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates

#155

Post by AnthonyMouse »

arcfour wrote: post #107
serf wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's necessary for FDE to have any sort of practical security why? do you mean because evil maid attacks exist? anyone that cared enough about that specific vector just put their bootloader on a removable media. FDE wasn't somehow enabled by secure boot. >bootkits are a security nightmare and would otherwise be much more common in malware why weren't they more common before? serious question. Back in the 90s viruses…

> anyone that cared enough about that specific vector just put their bootloader on a removable media. FDE wasn't somehow enabled by secure boot. Sure, but an attacker could still overwrite your kernel which your untouched bootloader would then happily run. With SB at least in theory you have a way to validate the entire boot chain. > why weren't they more common before? Because security of the rest of the system was…

> Sure, but an attacker could still overwrite your kernel which your untouched bootloader would then happily run.

Except that it's on the encrypted partition and the attacker doesn't have the key to unlock it since that's on the removable media with the boot loader.

They could write garbage to it, but then it's just going to crash, and if all they want is to destroy the data they could just use a hammer.

Re: Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates

#156

Post by 201984 »

hhh wrote: post #86
201984 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what if that customer wants to run their own firmware, ie after the manufacturer goes out of business? "Security" in this case conveniently prevente that.

you click the box to turn off secure boot

And how do you do that on some locked down embedded device? Say, a thermostat for instance.

Re: Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates

#157

Post by tosti »

wat10000 wrote: post #65
tosti wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers should abide by their owners. Any computer not doing that is broken.

This gets tricky. If I click on a link intending to view a picture of a cat, but instead it installs ransomware, is that abiding by its owner or not? It did what I told it to do, but not at all what I wanted.

If you connect your computer to the Internet, it can get hacked. If you leave it logged in unattended or don't use authentication, someone else can use it without your permission.

This isn't rocket science and it has nothing to do with artificially locking down a computer to serve the vendor instead of the owner.

Edit: I'd like to add that no amount of extra warranty from the vendors are going to cover the risk of a malware infection.

Re: Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates

#158

Post by 201984 »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #134
bakugo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and then some essential software you need to run detects that and refuses to run. See where the problem is here?

It does no such thing if you enrol your own keys using the extremely well documented process to do that.

Where is this "extremely well documented process" to enroll new signing keys on an embedded device? I don't see one for any of these embedded processors with secure boot.

https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/categories/1214-rp2350/do...

https://documentation.espressif.com/esp32_technical_referenc...

https://docs.amd.com/v/u/en-US/ug1085-zynq-ultrascale-trm

Re: Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates

#159

Post by mschuster91 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #151
whatevaa wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full disk encryption protects from somebody yanking a hard drive from running server (actually happens) or stealing a laptop. Calling it useless because it doesn't match your threat model... I hate todays security people, can't threat model for shit.

> Full disk encryption protects from somebody yanking a hard drive from running server (actually happens) or stealing a laptop. Both of these are super easy to solve without secure boot: The device uses FDE and the key is provided over the network during boot, in the laptop case after the user provides a password. Doing it this way is significantly more secure than using a TPM because the network can stop providing t…

> The device uses FDE and they key is provided over the network during boot, in the laptop case after the user provides a password.

Sounds nice on paper, has issues in practice:

1. no internet (e.g. something like Iran)? Your device is effectively bricked.

2. heavily monitored internet (e.g. China, USA)? It's probably easy enough for the government to snoop your connection metadata and seize the physical server.

3. no security at all against hardware implants / base firmware modification. Secure Boot can cryptographically prove to the OS that your BIOS, your ACPI tables and your bootloader didn't get manipulated.

Re: Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates

#160

Post by woodruffw »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #148
riedel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of a central signing authority for open source. While this might go against the spirit of open source, I think it eventually creates a critical mass and outcry if Microsoft or Google would play games with them. Also foundations might be a good way to protect against legal trouble distributing OSS under different regulations. I am imagining e.g. an FDroid that plays Googles game. With reproducible or a…

There is no real advantage of a central signing authority. If you use Debian the packages are signed by Debian, if you use Arch they're signed by Arch, etc. And then if one of them gets compromised, the scope of compromise is correspondingly limited. You also have the verification happening in the right place. The person who maintains the Arch curl package knows where they got it and what changes they made to it. Som…

All PKI topologies have tradeoffs. The main benefit to a centralized certification/signing authority is that you don't have to delegate the complexity of trust to peers in the system: a peer knows that a signature is valid because it can chain it back to a pre-established root of trust, rather than having to establish a new degree of trust in a previously unknown party.

The downside to a centralized authority is that they're a single point of failure. PKIs like the Web PKI mediate this by having multiple central authorities (each issuing CA) and forcing them to engage in cryptographically verifiable audibility schemes that keep them honest (certificate transparency).

It's worth noting that the kind of "small trusted keyring" topology used by Debian, Arch, etc. is a form of centralized signing. It's just an ad-hoc one.

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