gHacks technology news » disk encryption

Disk Encryption Software TrueCrypt 6.3 Released

Martin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:55:16 +0000

TrueCrypt is one of the most popular Open Source disk encryption software programs for the Windows operating system. It can be used to encrypt entire hard disks, partitions and to create encrypted containers on hard disks that have a specific size defined by the user. Some of the latest features that have been added include operating system encryption and complete system encryption. The latest version of TrueCrypt brings full support for Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system that has been released today.

While Windows 7 support is probably the stand-out feature of the True Crypt 6.3 release there are a few others additions and changes that might be interesting to some users. TrueCrypt 6.3 adds full support for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard as well which should please Mac users who use the software program.

Another addition to this release of the disk encryption software is the “system favorite volumes” option. This comes in handy “when you have volumes that need to be mounted before system and application services start and before users start logging on. It is also useful when there are network-shared folders located on a TrueCrypt volume and you need to ensure that the network shares will be restored by the system each time it is restarted.”

The latest version of True Crypt can be downloaded from the developer’s website where it is available for all supported operating systems.

Ghacks Christmas Giveaway: DriveCrypt

Martin — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:00:33 +0000

This is the first day of the second half of the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway. You can expect the same quality in the coming twelve days. We made lots of Ghacks readers happy by sending them licenses to commercial software products that we personally love and can fully recommend to anyone. Today’s software was donated by SecurStar, developers of the encryption software DriveCrypt.

DriveCrypt is a 1344 Bit disk encryption software using cryptographic algorithms such as AES, Blowfish or Tea 32 that can encrypt partitions, entire hard drives (with the exception of the boot drive) and USB devices. Besides that it can also create encrypted containers on storage devices so that only part of the space is reserved for the encrypted data.

DriveCrypt makes use of on-the-fly decryption to ensure that only the data that is currently needed resides in the computer’s memory to minimize the risk if someone would record and analyse the data in memory.

DriveCrypt is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Installation is flawless as is the setup of the encrypted storage space. The software starts in simple mode which reduces the elements on the screen to a bare minimum. Experienced users can switch to the advanced mode which is providing them with more options in the interface.

The Simple Mode basically consists of four buttons which are used to create and manage data safes. It is possible to create a new safe, load an existing safe, dismount all safes or to scan for safes on the computer system.

There are usually no safes after the installation and it is up to the user to create the first encrypted safe. It is necessary to define a few parameters like the size of the container and the password but basically anything else including the algorithm is selected by the software program. It is possible to use a normal password or one that spans across four lines to increase security.

The advanced mode provides all the missing options for experienced users. They can select the file system and the encryption algorithm. The ability to create a encrypted partition is only available in the advanced mode like several other options:

Invisible Containers: Create hidden containers in encrypted containers.
Hide Data In Music Files: Add data to music files
Hot Disk Encryption: Encrypt removable devices and make the data inaccessible once their are unplugged from the computer system.
Password Security: Master Password for administrators, Restricted second user Passwords
and Second user Password Expiration
Password Sniffing Protection: protects against password sniffers like trojans or keyloggers.
Anti Dictionary or Brute Force Attack mechanism: Slows down brute force attacks.
Disk Wiping: DriveCrypt is able to delete the free space on a storage device so that the data is not recoverable.
External Hardware Support: Works with fingerprint and smartcard readers, as well as USB token
Works on any Storage Medium: Works on hard drives, removable devices including CDs and DVDs, basically anything that can be used to store data.

DriveCrypt offers an easy way to create encrypted containers for data on their storage devices. You can win one out of 50 licenses for DriveCrypt by writing a comment below.

Tags: disk encryption, DriveCrypt, encrypt hard drive, encryption, ghacks Christmas giveaway, hard-drive-encryption

True Crypt 6.1 Released

Martin — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:47:03 +0000

One of the very first articles that was published here at Ghacks was an article about securing a computer with True Crypt. The True Crypt developers have made several interesting changes both to the functionality of the hard drive encryption software but also to the speed and performance of it.

Version 6.1 of True Crypt was released two days ago and it has – again – added interesting features to the encryption software. The major improvement of this release affects Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems. It is now possible to encrypt non system partitions on those operating systems without losing the data on those partitions. That feature is unfortunately not available in previous operating systems such as Windows XP.

To encrypt a non-system partition and retain the data of the partition one would have to follow the path
Create Volume’ > ‘Encrypt a non-system partition’ > ‘Standard volume’ > ‘Select Device’ > ‘Encrypt partition in place’ in True Crypt.

Another interesting addition is the support of keyfiles on security tokens and smart cards that comply with the PKCS #11 standard. Text output of the True Crypt bootloader can now be suppressed or customized.

A complete list of changes and updates is available in the True Crypt release notes on the True Crypt homepage.

Tags: disk encryption, encrypt pc, hard disk encryption, protect computer, protect pc, secure data, secure pc, true-crypt

Software to defeat Disk Encryption released

Martin — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 11:41:22 +0000

You might remember the research paper published by the Center for Information Technology Policy at the University of Princeton that described how disk encryption could be defeated by taking a snapshot of the system memory and analysing that memory for data and keys. I covered the Defeating Disk Encryption story here at Ghacks in February)

The developers of the application have released the software, or more precisely the source code, that they have created for their research paper which can be freely downloaded from the project’s website. Available are the tools to create an image of the system memory, the automatic key finding applications and a program for error-correction for AES key schedules.

Two memory imaging tools (USB / PXE Imaging Tools and EFI Netboot Imaging Tools) and Automatic key-finding (AESKeyFinder and RSAKeyFinder) are available on the website.

The research paper can also be downloaded from the website along with frequently asked questions.

Tags: aes keys, disk encryption, encryption, rsa keys, system memory, university of princeton

Increase True Crypt AES performance

Martin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:50:00 +0000

I used the new version of True Crypt to encrypt my new external hard drive which has become almost a standard procedure for me to do. Whenever I buy a new hard drive I encrypt it completely with True Crypt. I discovered by chance a way to increase the performance of the AES algorithm in True Crypt.

The solution is a little bit complicated because you have to compile a source to get it to work. The benefit however is a much better performance of that algorithm which has been programmed in Assembler in comparison to the one programmed in C that True Crypt is using by default.

The increase is amazing. The bandwidth increases by about 20 MB/s from 66 MB/s to 85 MB/s on the system of the user who discovered it. It depends on the hard drive of course but everyone should see a gain in the end.

You will need the following to compile the algorithm source and True Crypt:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 with SP1
Microsoft Visual C++ 1.52
Windows Driver Development Kit (DDK) Vista Build 6000
YASM

You can read the full instructions in this thread. I was not able to locate a precompiled version of True Crypt with this faster AES algorithm yet. If anyone comes up with a trustworthy download source let me know. I unfortunately do not have Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

Tags: disk encryption, encryption, hard-drive-encryption, software, true-crypt, Windows

Defeating Disk Encryption

Martin — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:18:22 +0000

I discovered an interesting video at Hack a Day from the University of Princeton demonstrating how to break disk encryption using so called RAM Dumps. This basically takes into account that the encryption key is stored in RAM. While most disk encryption mechanisms are vulnerable while the computer is on or in sleep mode some are even vulnerable when powered off.

What they did was to boot the computer from an USB drive that would load a RAM dumping program. Tests conducted by the University of Princeton showed that it took between seconds and minutes before data that was stored in RAM was completely erased. The RAM also vanished in a predictable manner.

It’s interesting to see that cooling the RAM down to minus 50 degrees prolonged the time the data was readable, it was clearly readable after ten minutes. It’s a very interesting video in my opinion.

If you never thought about using a BIOS password and disabling booting from USB devices and CD / DVD before you should start thinking about it right now. That is if you use disk encryption.

Tags: disk encryption, encryption, hard-drive-encryption

gHacks technology news » disk encryption

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