Easy to crack an encrypted HDD - within 10 seconds ???

deltaecho · 2008-09-07 16:09:00

I was discussing hard drive encryption with a friend at school, and he told me no matter how strong a password or algorithm one uses to encrypt one's hard drive, the US government has software that can crack it within 10 seconds, and assured me he'd used such software while serving in the Army

Does anybody know anything about this?

Last edited by deltaecho (2008-09-07 20:56:48)

lilsirecho · 2008-09-07 16:24:41

Any code that can be devised can be decoded by another...without exception!

carlocci · 2008-09-07 16:29:09

deltaecho wrote:

I was discussing hard drive encryption with a friend at school, and he told me no matter how strong a password or algorithm one uses to encrypt one's hard drive, the US government has software that can crack it withing 10 seconds, and assured me he'd used such software while serving in the Army
Does anybody know anything about this?

that's nothing, a friend of mine told me he died once, when he was 8.

lilsirecho · 2008-09-07 16:35:54

Some living persons are listed as dead in government files!!

moljac024 · 2008-09-07 16:42:42

lilsirecho wrote:

Some living persons are listed as dead in government files!!

OMG NOOOOO!!!!!

/jumps out through the window

Last edited by moljac024 (2008-09-07 16:43:23)

Dusty · 2008-09-07 16:46:07

Certain cryptography algorithms have been mathematically proven to be irreversable without the key. The only attacks on such algorithms would be:

a) brute force -- try every possible key until one works. With sufficiently long keys, this would require more processing power than will currently available in the entire world. Having such a long key would be impractical, which is why as computers become faster, keys need to also become longer to make it harder to try all possibilities.

Some quantum algorithms have been devised to break certain cryptography keys. I highly doubt the US government has access to quantum computers that can do this. Nobody does yet. (Last I heard, the most powerful quantum computer could handle 7 bits of data at a time... not much, even if it is computing multiple solutions in parallel).

b) Finding the key somewhere. If your friend wasn't full of shit (unlikely), this is probably how it would work. Maybe the key has to be stored on the drive for encryption to work or maybe they have access to a huge database of recorded keystrokes of every computer in the world and they backed up the keys... I doubt this too.

I suggest encrypting a hard drive with a relatively standard algorithm and tell your friend to have his cronies unlock it for you. I'm pretty sure he won't be able to.

Dusty

deltaecho · 2008-09-07 16:47:00

lilsirecho wrote:

Some living persons are listed as dead in government files!!

It's all one big conspiracy - even Google is a secret branch of the CIA . . .

I wouldn't be surprised if the US Army has such incredible software. Most of the "new" developments we read about in places such as Slashdot and Wired are several years old, I can't imagine what's really going on behind their closed doors!

I suggest encrypting a hard drive with a relatively standard algorithm and tell your friend to have his cronies unlock it for you. I'm pretty sure he won't be able to.

I might try that

Last edited by deltaecho (2008-09-07 16:49:36)

moljac024 · 2008-09-07 16:53:33

Dusty wrote:

Certain cryptography algorithms have been mathematically proven to be irreversable without the key. The only attacks on such algorithms would be:
a) brute force -- try every possible key until one works. With sufficiently long keys, this would require more processing power than will currently available in the entire world. Having such a long key would be impractical, which is why as computers become faster, keys need to also become longer to make it harder to try all possibilities.
Some quantum algorithms have been devised to break certain cryptography keys. I highly doubt the US government has access to quantum computers that can do this. Nobody does yet. (Last I heard, the most powerful quantum computer could handle 7 bits of data at a time... not much, even if it is computing multiple solutions in parallel).
b) Finding the key somewhere. If your friend wasn't full of shit (unlikely), this is probably how it would work. Maybe the key has to be stored on the drive for encryption to work or maybe they have access to a huge database of recorded keystrokes of every computer in the world and they backed up the keys... I doubt this too.
I suggest encrypting a hard drive with a relatively standard algorithm and tell your friend to have his cronies unlock it for you. I'm pretty sure he won't be able to.
Dusty

Dusty, you are waaaay too optimistic man....

Last edited by moljac024 (2008-09-07 16:53:42)

deltaecho · 2008-09-07 17:24:48

Which, in anybody's opinion, is the most secure and/or logical encryption algorithm? I've been planning on encrypting my laptop's hard drive for a while, and will probably do so next weekend - after the external HDD case I ordered gets here.

After encrypting it, I will check with my friend to see if he still has access to the software he spoke of, and if he does, I'll see if he will try to crack my laptop. I'll let y'all know the outcome

moljac024 · 2008-09-07 17:28:03

deltaecho wrote:

Which, in anybody's opinion, is the most secure and/or logical encryption algorithm? I've been planning on encrypting my laptop's hard drive for a while, and will probably do so next weekend - after the external HDD case I ordered gets here.
After encrypting it, I will check with my friend to see if he still has access to the software he spoke of, and if he does, I'll see if he will try to crack my laptop. I'll let y'all know the outcome

Of course he won't still have access to the software....

deltaecho · 2008-09-07 17:50:34

That's my guess, but I'd like to ask him anyway - It'll be a fun experiment.

Dusty · 2008-09-07 18:04:15

I've never used it, but from what I've heard, I'd suggest TrueCrypt. Then he has to prove not only that he can decrypt the filesystem, but also that the filesystem exists.

Dusty

cactus · 2008-09-07 18:14:14

deltaecho wrote:

I was discussing hard drive encryption with a friend at school, and he told me no matter how strong a password or algorithm one uses to encrypt one's hard drive, the US government has software that can crack it withing 10 seconds, and assured me he'd used such software while serving in the Army
Does anybody know anything about this?

Most likely it just combs through the windows swap file and live memory to find the key, or uses one of the backdoor apis in windows. I _really doubt_ they were doing whole drive block encryption deconstruction in seconds.. unless it was DES or 3DES.

Dusty · 2008-09-07 18:16:09

I knew the tacoeater would post eventually. I figured TrueCrypt would attract him since it starts with T and has a C in the middle.

Dusty

deltaecho · 2008-09-07 18:17:24

Dusty wrote:

I've never used it, but from what I've heard, I'd suggest TrueCrypt. Then he has to prove not only that he can decrypt the filesystem, but also that the filesystem exists.
Dusty

Good stuff! Good stuff! About how long do you think it would take to write over a 160Gb 5200rpm HDD with random characters using 'dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda' ? I have another laptop hard drive the same size as the one I'm currently using; what I plan to do is clone my current HDD to the extra one, swap them (put the extra one in my laptop and put the one that came with my laptop in the external case), and use the extra one while I randomize all the data in the other. I will then encrypt and restore my current installation to the randomized hard drive and put it back in my laptop.

Also, if I could figure out how to encrypt only certain directories, would I need to encrypt anything other than my /home, /tmp, /var/tmp, and SWAP partitions?

Dusty wrote:

I knew the tacoeater would post eventually. I figured TrueCrypt would attract him since it starts with T and has a C in the middle.
Dusty

Last edited by deltaecho (2008-09-07 18:37:48)

Profjim · 2008-09-07 18:37:53

Utilities like shred and wipe by default write over the drive in many passes (by default >=7 passes, I think). But if you've got a clean drive/or if you don't care about the data that was on it formerly, maybe that's unimportant. When I've wiped 100G drives in the past (using multiple wipes, before selling the computers), it's been an all-night affair. One pass might be a matter of an hour or three.

skottish · 2008-09-07 20:10:23

The US government has the keys to all commercially available encryption algorithms in the US (at least). That's why it's so easy.

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrim … faq.htm#1a

Oh yeah, and please don't start some idiotic political discussion over the above link. I posted it because it is a fact. We don't need any more spun-out, propaganda laden bullshit in the world.

Last edited by skottish (2008-09-07 20:29:00)

deltaecho · 2008-09-07 20:41:25

So all I would have to do would be to use an unrecoverable encryption algorithm and all will be well (not that I have anything to hide from the government anyway)?

moljac024 · 2008-09-07 20:58:12

deltaecho wrote:

So all I would have to do would be to use an unrecoverable encryption algorithm and all will be well (not that I have anything to hide from the government anyway)?

Of course, they're all over 18 aren't they ?

dunc · 2008-09-07 21:00:35

deltaecho wrote:

So all I would have to do would be to use an unrecoverable encryption algorithm and all will be well (not that I have anything to hide from the government anyway)?

You never know what you might have to hide from the government...

Hey, where's the tinfoil hat smiley on this thing?

Edit:There needs to be a word for getting beaten with a better one-liner by a matter of seconds on online forums. Good one, moljac024!

Last edited by dunc (2008-09-07 21:03:31)

tonyisnt · 2008-09-07 21:13:05

cactus wrote:

deltaecho wrote:
I was discussing hard drive encryption with a friend at school, and he told me no matter how strong a password or algorithm one uses to encrypt one's hard drive, the US government has software that can crack it withing 10 seconds, and assured me he'd used such software while serving in the Army
Does anybody know anything about this?
Most likely it just combs through the windows swap file and live memory to find the key, or uses one of the backdoor apis in windows. I _really doubt_ they were doing whole drive block encryption deconstruction in seconds.. unless it was DES or 3DES.

I don't know about this. Would that work? Because isn't the Windows pagefile located on the hard drive, meaning that drive would have to be readable in the first place? RAM is obviously a different story.

I'm no expert on any of this, of course, it just doesn't sound like that method would work.

B-Con · 2008-09-08 01:34:05

Dusty wrote:

I've never used it, but from what I've heard, I'd suggest TrueCrypt. Then he has to prove not only that he can decrypt the filesystem, but also that the filesystem exists.

I've used TrueCrypt for a couple years and followed its development. It's a good program, possibly the best.

skottish wrote:

The US government has the keys to all commercially available encryption algorithms in the US (at least). That's why it's so easy.

Not necessarily "all commercial", but I wouldn't trust the companies farther than I can throw their CEOs. That the US Gov't has backdoor's into a lot -- no question about it. And it's not just domestic.

tonyisnt wrote:

I don't know about this. Would that work? Because isn't the Windows pagefile located on the hard drive, meaning that drive would have to be readable in the first place? RAM is obviously a different story.
I'm no expert on any of this, of course, it just doesn't sound like that method would work.

It's generally assumed that a major government agency/operation can get access to any machine they desire. Whether it be via remote exploit or simply breaking down the door. Scanning swapfiles is common, as is scanning an active machine's RAM space -- or at least writing it to disk and then analyzing it.

tonyisnt · 2008-09-08 03:02:35

I didn't necessarily mean the government, but breaking encryption (fast). If you can't access the disk, it seems logical that you wouldn't be able to access data on the disk, no?

cactus · 2008-09-08 05:40:15

tonyisnt wrote:

cactus wrote:
deltaecho wrote:
I was discussing hard drive encryption with a friend at school, and he told me no matter how strong a password or algorithm one uses to encrypt one's hard drive, the US government has software that can crack it withing 10 seconds, and assured me he'd used such software while serving in the Army
Does anybody know anything about this?
Most likely it just combs through the windows swap file and live memory to find the key, or uses one of the backdoor apis in windows. I _really doubt_ they were doing whole drive block encryption deconstruction in seconds.. unless it was DES or 3DES.
I don't know about this. Would that work? Because isn't the Windows pagefile located on the hard drive, meaning that drive would have to be readable in the first place? RAM is obviously a different story.
I'm no expert on any of this, of course, it just doesn't sound like that method would work.

I wasn't thinking of whole drive encryption, I was thinking of file encryption, under a possible scenario that the friend in the original post was just ill informed as to what was happening.

tonyisnt · 2008-09-08 18:02:45

Ahhhh. Got it.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-09-07 16:09:00

Easy to crack an encrypted HDD - within 10 seconds ???

#2 2008-09-07 16:24:41

Re: Easy to crack an encrypted HDD - within 10 seconds ???

#3 2008-09-07 16:29:09

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#25 2008-09-08 18:02:45

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