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ECryptfs Security Audit

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Re: ECryptfs Security Audit

#21

Post by tptacek »

wyager wrote: post #16
tptacek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EcryptFS and Truecrypt are very different systems. Truecrypt is simulated hardware encryption. It creates a virtual encrypted hard disk, which your operating system can more or less treat like an ordinary hard disk, but for the kernel hooks Truecrypt adds to lock and unlock the disk. EcryptFS is an encrypted filesystem. Unlike Truecrypt, which encrypts individual disk blocks, systems like EcryptFS encrypt and decrypt…

>All else being equal, you'd prefer an encrypted filesystem to a simulated encrypted hard disk. I disagree for these reasons: 1. This decreases composability. With encrypted filesystems, I can't mix and match filesystems and cryptosystems to suit my needs. There is no reason they need to be convolved. 2. This increases complexity. Now, the person writing the software has to be an expert in both filesystems and crypto…

There's nothing I can say in response to this comment that I haven't already said upthread and here:

http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2014/04/30/you-dont-want-xts/

Re: ECryptfs Security Audit

#22

Post by tptacek »

pbsd wrote: post #10
tptacek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EcryptFS and Truecrypt are very different systems. Truecrypt is simulated hardware encryption. It creates a virtual encrypted hard disk, which your operating system can more or less treat like an ordinary hard disk, but for the kernel hooks Truecrypt adds to lock and unlock the disk. EcryptFS is an encrypted filesystem. Unlike Truecrypt, which encrypts individual disk blocks, systems like EcryptFS encrypt and decrypt…

Do you guys only use OS X over there, or are there equivalent setups for other systems?

The iSEC people use Windows and Linux, but I don't know what they use for encryption. Everyone at Matasano is on OS X.

Re: ECryptfs Security Audit

#23

Post by atmosx »

tptacek wrote: post #22
pbsd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you guys only use OS X over there, or are there equivalent setups for other systems?

The iSEC people use Windows and Linux, but I don't know what they use for encryption. Everyone at Matasano is on OS X.

What kind of encryption do you use at Matasano?

You use the build-in disk image encrypted volumes (AES-128/256 IIRC), or some proprietary software? Do you have a standard policy (e.g. FileVault) or no?

Re: ECryptfs Security Audit

#24

Post by dchest »

atmosx wrote: post #23
tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iSEC people use Windows and Linux, but I don't know what they use for encryption. Everyone at Matasano is on OS X.

What kind of encryption do you use at Matasano? You use the build-in disk image encrypted volumes (AES-128/256 IIRC), or some proprietary software? Do you have a standard policy (e.g. FileVault) or no?

See the bottom of the grand-grandparent comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8059218

Re: ECryptfs Security Audit

#25

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #4
hadoukenio wrote: post #2

I chose eryptfs over TrueCrypt because I wasn't happy with using encryption software written by an anonymous developer. Was this a naive decision or do others feel the same? The audit linked says that it ecryptfs might not have been designed/written by a cryptographer. What would people recommend these days seeing as TrueCrypt is likely to be compromised and ecryptfs might not be as secure as it could be?

EcryptFS and Truecrypt are very different systems. Truecrypt is simulated hardware encryption. It creates a virtual encrypted hard disk, which your operating system can more or less treat like an ordinary hard disk, but for the kernel hooks Truecrypt adds to lock and unlock the disk. EcryptFS is an encrypted filesystem. Unlike Truecrypt, which encrypts individual disk blocks, systems like EcryptFS encrypt and decrypt…

[deleted]

Re: ECryptfs Security Audit

#26

Post by Khaine »

tptacek wrote: post #4
hadoukenio wrote: post #2

I chose eryptfs over TrueCrypt because I wasn't happy with using encryption software written by an anonymous developer. Was this a naive decision or do others feel the same? The audit linked says that it ecryptfs might not have been designed/written by a cryptographer. What would people recommend these days seeing as TrueCrypt is likely to be compromised and ecryptfs might not be as secure as it could be?

EcryptFS and Truecrypt are very different systems. Truecrypt is simulated hardware encryption. It creates a virtual encrypted hard disk, which your operating system can more or less treat like an ordinary hard disk, but for the kernel hooks Truecrypt adds to lock and unlock the disk. EcryptFS is an encrypted filesystem. Unlike Truecrypt, which encrypts individual disk blocks, systems like EcryptFS encrypt and decrypt…

Do you guys use anything to manage your encrypted DMGs (like knox https://agilebits.com/knox)?

Re: ECryptfs Security Audit

#27

Post by hadoukenio »

tptacek wrote: post #4
hadoukenio wrote: post #2

I chose eryptfs over TrueCrypt because I wasn't happy with using encryption software written by an anonymous developer. Was this a naive decision or do others feel the same? The audit linked says that it ecryptfs might not have been designed/written by a cryptographer. What would people recommend these days seeing as TrueCrypt is likely to be compromised and ecryptfs might not be as secure as it could be?

EcryptFS and Truecrypt are very different systems. Truecrypt is simulated hardware encryption. It creates a virtual encrypted hard disk, which your operating system can more or less treat like an ordinary hard disk, but for the kernel hooks Truecrypt adds to lock and unlock the disk. EcryptFS is an encrypted filesystem. Unlike Truecrypt, which encrypts individual disk blocks, systems like EcryptFS encrypt and decrypt…

That's a great explanation. Thanks for that. Now I'm curious about why it's so locked down at Matasano... what are the main threats to need full-disk encryption and then multiple encrypted containers per project?

I should have explained my reasoning for originally choosing ecryptfs. I find it really convenient doing a backup of ecryptfs' cipher-text. Since it's simple files, an rsync will do. If I wanted to backup virtual encrypted disks, I would first have to mount source and destination to do an rsync, or painstakingly do an entire dd without the mount... maybe I'm just doing it wrong?

Re: ECryptfs Security Audit

#28

Post by tux1968 »

fluidcruft wrote: post #5
bignaj wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, TrueCrypt (controversially) recommended BitLocker... that seems to be one of the few options left. Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft in a non-related division but I feel like if it's good enough to protect enterprise customers' secrets it's good enough for my personal use outside of work. You are free to use whatever you like, of course. The HN neckbeard illuminati will likely disagree with me, already aware of…

BitLocker has the advantage of being accepted by my employer and now that XP was banished in favor of Win7 it's available on all of the company computers. It has the extreme disadvantage that I can't mount my disk on anything except windows. Which is a no-go given that I mostly live in Linux and most of my colleagues do a lot of work with MacOS. We all have Windows machines for the bureaucratic stuff we must do (word…

You should be able to mount BitLocker volumes under Linux with Fuse:

    https://github.com/Aorimn/dislocker

Re: ECryptfs Security Audit

#29

Post by daeken »

Khaine wrote: post #26
tptacek wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EcryptFS and Truecrypt are very different systems. Truecrypt is simulated hardware encryption. It creates a virtual encrypted hard disk, which your operating system can more or less treat like an ordinary hard disk, but for the kernel hooks Truecrypt adds to lock and unlock the disk. EcryptFS is an encrypted filesystem. Unlike Truecrypt, which encrypts individual disk blocks, systems like EcryptFS encrypt and decrypt…

Do you guys use anything to manage your encrypted DMGs (like knox https://agilebits.com/knox )?

I can't speak to their current setup, but when I was there, pretty much everyone used Knox. Great app.

Re: ECryptfs Security Audit

#30

Post by Dylan16807 »

bignaj wrote: post #3
hadoukenio wrote: post #2

I chose eryptfs over TrueCrypt because I wasn't happy with using encryption software written by an anonymous developer. Was this a naive decision or do others feel the same? The audit linked says that it ecryptfs might not have been designed/written by a cryptographer. What would people recommend these days seeing as TrueCrypt is likely to be compromised and ecryptfs might not be as secure as it could be?

Well, TrueCrypt (controversially) recommended BitLocker... that seems to be one of the few options left. Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft in a non-related division but I feel like if it's good enough to protect enterprise customers' secrets it's good enough for my personal use outside of work. You are free to use whatever you like, of course. The HN neckbeard illuminati will likely disagree with me, already aware of…

That disclaimer really detracts from your post.

But on topic, BitLocker is only suitable for enterprise because it's simply unavailable for home versions.

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