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True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

#61

Post by papaf »

grrowl wrote: post #21
nness wrote: post #4

Out of curiosity, wouldn't the open-source TrueCrypt be better than the closed BitLocker? (assuming, of course, that TrueCrypt was not already compromised)

I don't believe BitLocker can be considered secure. Cross-post (mine) from the previous thread: > Not "backdoors" but it seems Microsoft stores the BitLocker decryption key, based on this leaked slide (just found on twitter): https://twitter.com/TheBlogPirate/status/471759810644283392/... > edit: Confirmed Microsoft stores your recovery key on their servers if you're not connected to a domain: http://windows.microsof…

In the Greenwald book (No Place to Hide) he describes how Microsoft made a real effort with Skype and their Dropbox clone to open them up to the NSA.

Now I have read these revelations, I feel that not trusting Microsoft is a sensible default.

Re: True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

#62

Post by blueskin_ »

weinzierl wrote: post #60
blueskin_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, bitlocker explicitly send the key to MS for non-domain systems - as such, I would guess it potentially still does for those on a domain too, it'd just be kept quieter. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/bitlocker-recov... Bitlocker is not trustworthy as an overall method of FDE.

Your link says "There are several locations in which your BitLocker recovery key might have been saved." and then mentions "Your Microsoft account online.". Do you know under which conditions this happens?

At least when it is enabled in Windows 8 with a computer linked to a hotmail account, but I would never rule out other conditions too.

Re: True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

#63

Post by blueskin_ »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #59
blueskin_ wrote: post #16

This seems highly suspicious, especially the recommendation of BitLocker, a product we have little to no evidence does what it says and after PRISM, have no reason to trust[2]; not to mention it being limited to a (very small subset of) Windows platforms vs. TrueCrypt's cross-platform functionality. If this was legit[1], it'd probably be directing people to one of the other TrueCrypt-like programs. [1]The new version…

Would this be a Lavabit-like situation? The governement asking for a backdoor and the developers are refusing it. Suddenly (while there is an audit), they quit everything, change the assemblies and the website, so users can get to another product... It seems weird that after 10 years of hard-work, they suddenly quit without further explanation.

If so, I would at least like to think they would have likely pointed people towards something which gives at least comparable security, rather than a backdoored product.

Re: True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

#64

Post by logicallee »

J_Darnley wrote: post #37
Eye_of_Mordor wrote: post #32

Perhaps TrueCrypt was an NSA scam all along, 'retiring' before they're found out? Worse still, a Russian/Chinese scam!

Why is that worse?

America has rule of law and the NSA had to go rogue to do what it did; once their program was outed it's on all news, everyone is discussing; Americans enjoy real rights.

If China or Russia had the same capabilities there would not be any theoretical backlash against this being discovered, since par for the course there is far less freedom. It's not the abstraction that's promised even theoretically.

This is the same reason why it's better when Google (with its nominal "do no evil" strategy) turned out to collect wifi data with its street cars, which is not as bad as if Microsoft (with no such policy or mission) had done the same thing.

Re: True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

#65

Post by rflig2 »

cornholio wrote: post #31

Truecrypt is dead, long live ChipCrypt: a Truecrypt fork with TRESOR and scrypt built in. TRESOR is a technique that keeps the volume key strictly in the CPU registers and not in RAM. This completely prevents RAM freezing and related attacks. A running computer that is locked cannot be trivially decrypted anymore by dumping it's RAM. Scrypt is an advanced password derivation function that makes even trivial passwords…

"Who's up for it ?" Neither Google (no hit) nor Wikipedia [0] You might want to provide a link to the softwares homepage as well as additional information?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_disk_encryption_...

Re: True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

#66

Post by cornholio »

blueskin_ wrote: post #57
cornholio wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say "complementary" not "incompatible". Once you have derived the key you can clear the RAM and keep the key on the CPU chip only. So there's a vulnerability window of a few seconds during which the key (or key related material) is stored in RAM, after which it can no longer be recovered. In sharp contrast with regular TrueCrypt where the master volume key is stored in RAM all the time. It's already standard…

Agreed. Only doing operations involving transferring the key to RAM when the user is present should mitigate it, perhaps with a prominent WARNING dialog showing when memory is vulnerable, and overwriting the memory locations used for the key when done.

Truth be told, if RAM is a security liability for the few seconds it takes to enter the password and derive the key, then you can't give any security guarantees whatsoever no matter what algorithm you use, scrypt, PBKDF2 or any other.

It's not like you can punch the password into the CPU directly, you need to use some sort of input device which has drivers which keep state in RAM, use DMA and IRQs etc. Any attacker capable of reading RAM during this phase is also capable of sniffing the password characters as they are typed on the keyboard.

Re: True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

#67

Post by mseebach »

spiritplumber wrote: post #54
dchest wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These two (TRESOR and scrypt) are incompatible, unless you allow for some time period where keys can be extracted. The point of scrypt is to be sequentially memory-hard: it mixes password and salt in a huge amount of RAM and makes it impossible to not use RAM for this operation.

I guess a stupid way to do that would be to prompt "This next step requires you to disconnect from the internet" and loop as long as 8.8.8.8 is pingable or something, then prompt when it's safe to reconnect.

It would be stupid, yes :)

If someone has remote control of your computer, they'd install a sniffer that picks up the password and sends it back next time there's an internet connection.

Re: True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

#68

Post by jackweirdy »

pling wrote: post #49
darklajid wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RDP: Is there anything freerdp cannot do that you need from day to day? I'm working with Windows, but run Linux without any issues so far.

We have an RDP gateway which is an awful pile of shit to deal with as it uses HTTPS initiated MSRPC as the transport layer. FreeRDP doesn't work properly with that yet as there are all sorts of odd configuration and encryption things that are almost impossible to line up properly when your ops team don't actually know what they're doing or how to find out stuff for you.

Ugh; I remember having that problem a couple of years ago. In the end I had to split a room of thin clients in half, and have them each point at 1 of 2 hosts. Defeating the point of load balancing entirely :/

Re: True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

#69

Post by throwaway99812 »

higherpurpose wrote: post #3
panarky wrote: post #2

"[Matthew] Green last year helped spearhead dual crowdfunding efforts to raise money for a full-scale, professional security audit of the software." "'I think the TrueCrypt team did this,' Green said in a phone interview. 'They decided to quit and this is their signature way of doing it.'" "I’m a little worried that the fact we were doing an audit of the crypto might have made them decide to call it quits.”

I think that's why they are quitting. They didn't want the audit to find something. But it's just a speculation like any other.

It's more likely that they were angry that the audit got a lot of funds and they didn't.

In OSS often the people who do the original work get nothing and all the money goes to pundits, packagers, and consultants.

Re: True Goodbye: ‘Using TrueCrypt Is Not Secure’

#70

Post by moe »

papaf wrote: post #61
grrowl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe BitLocker can be considered secure. Cross-post (mine) from the previous thread: > Not "backdoors" but it seems Microsoft stores the BitLocker decryption key, based on this leaked slide (just found on twitter): https://twitter.com/TheBlogPirate/status/471759810644283392/... > edit: Confirmed Microsoft stores your recovery key on their servers if you're not connected to a domain: http://windows.microsof…

In the Greenwald book (No Place to Hide) he describes how Microsoft made a real effort with Skype and their Dropbox clone to open them up to the NSA. Now I have read these revelations, I feel that not trusting Microsoft is a sensible default.

Now I have read these revelations, I feel that not trusting Microsoft is a sensible default.

You make it sound as if trusting Microsoft was ever an option to begin with...

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