[HN Gopher] VeraCrypt: Free open-source disk encryption for Wind...
___________________________________________________________________
VeraCrypt: Free open-source disk encryption for Windows, Mac OS X,
Linux
Author : thunderbong
Score : 322 points
Date : 2023-10-02 02:11 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.veracrypt.fr)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.veracrypt.fr)
| distract8901 wrote:
| I actually really like VeraCrypt. Last time I used it was 5 or 6
| years ago and the UI looked like something straight out of the
| 90s, which is a good thing IMO.
| mhogomchungu wrote:
| If you are on Linux and prefer a Qt based GUI, then check out
| zuluCrypt[1].
|
| It can create PLAIN dm-crypt, LUKS, TrueCrypt and VeraCrypt
| volumes.
|
| It can unlock PLAIN dm-crypt, LUKS, TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt and
| Bitlocker volumes.
|
| [1] https://github.com/mhogomchungu/zuluCrypt
| krylon wrote:
| That is nice.
|
| The big plus for VeraCrypt (and TrueCrypt before that),
| however, is that it works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. If you
| need an encrypted flash drive for sharing data between
| different systems, it's the only option that I know of. Which
| is unfortunate.
| Grimburger wrote:
| Not trying to diminish zulucrypt here but I really hope people
| aren't choosing encryption programs based on the GUI framework
| they use.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Well, veracrypt has a random seeding stage where you're
| required to shake the mouse around to create randomness.
| Problem is, that it only registers when the mouse is over the
| actual tiny veracrypt window. Problem with that is, it tells
| you that in some tiny bold text at the bottom. You can waste
| literally an hour wondering why the randomness meter goes up
| only sometimes. A better UI might fix that.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Afaik that kind of entropy generation is silly on modern
| machines. You should just call getrandom (or whatever the
| equivalent is for the modern OS it's running on is) and be
| done with it. Hand rolled entropy like this isn't necessary
| anymore - the OSes have very high quality CSPRNGs baked in
| natively and seeded directly from interrupts and other HW
| entropy sources.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Good point. Is entropy built into the kernel, though?
| Last time I checked this I had to manually enable it as a
| system service, though this was a fair few years back.
| Grimburger wrote:
| > isn't necessary anymore
|
| It also doesn't hurt if you hash it into or xor with
| existing randomness, it will still be as strong as the
| best source of entropy you have even if it's all 0's
| being mixed in.
| vore wrote:
| A small UI improvement is not worth switching from a far
| more tested and audited application. The UI might be worse,
| but I wouldn't play dice with applications with critical
| security requirements.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| You can make the window bigger, at least that can be done
| on linux. Ive never tried veracrypt's gui on windows. I
| very likely never will.
| mxmlnkn wrote:
| You can even click on the window, hold the mouse button
| clicked and now all mouse movements, even outside the
| window, register and increase the randomness meter.
| speedgoose wrote:
| I think putting some efforts in the user experience is
| important. A better GUI may mean that more people will use
| encryption.
|
| Bitlocker and FireVault are very easy to use compared to
| VeraCrypt or LUKS, and they are much more common. So many
| Linux installations don't have disk encryption...
| Grimburger wrote:
| Most definitely, especially in FOSS which has a dearth of
| good UX. But the point was more that this shouldn't be a
| form-over-function moment, do that with something else like
| a lounge purchase.
| andersa wrote:
| It's really annoying how none of these tools provide an easy way
| to activate the properly fast, zero CPU overhead hardware-based
| encryption that almost all modern SSDs can do, which also makes
| it work properly with DirectStorage, etc.
|
| The only one I'm aware of that can do it is Bitlocker, but the
| setup is stupidly clunky for no reason (you even have to
| reinstall windows to activate it - wtf).
|
| A while back I used a tool to do it manually called sedutil but
| it seems to be abandoned now and no longer works with modern
| processors.
| yomlica8 wrote:
| Microsoft actually used the disk encryption scheme by default
| in early versions of bitlocker. They had to backtrack because
| the disk encryption implementations were found to often not
| work at all!
| ndiddy wrote:
| SSD based encryption implementations are often highly insecure
| and should never be used. Many drives don't even use the given
| password to encrypt the data on the disk, meaning that flashing
| the controller with a modified firmware with the password
| validation patched out will let anyone decrypt the data without
| needing to know the password. https://www.ieee-
| security.org/TC/SP2019/papers/310.pdf
| andersa wrote:
| Well that's disappointing.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It's really annoying how none of these tools provide an easy
| way to activate the properly fast, zero CPU overhead hardware-
| based encryption that almost all modern SSDs can do, which also
| makes it work properly with DirectStorage, etc.
|
| Because the situation is similar to Dr. House: All disks lie.
| An OS can't trust the quality of the encryption in modern SSDs,
| there is no way short of dedicated hardware and firmware
| reverse engineering to make sure it _actually_ encrypts the
| data. And on top of that comes the issue with using the
| supposedly "secure" TPM for disk encryption, that in many
| cases can simply be sniffed on the communication bus [1].
|
| The only way a disk encryption solution can reasonably
| guarantee security is if it either controls the whole stack
| (such as Apple's FileVault using the T2 coprocessor on
| Intel/built-in capabilities on M SoCs) or it does everything in
| ring 0 inside the OS.
|
| [1] https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/articles/TPM-sniffing
| andersa wrote:
| > Because the situation is similar to Dr. House: All disks
| lie. An OS can't trust the quality of the encryption in
| modern SSDs
|
| Why is this the job of the OS? If we trust the SSD ourselves,
| it should simply accept that and proceed using the API as
| intended. For example, there's no reason to suspect anything
| wrong with the latest Samsung SSDs, is there?
|
| I've so far not understood the purpose of the TPM here. Why
| can't the key be derived off a password entered during boot?
| It's not necessary to involve a TPM at all.
|
| It seems wild to even consider software encryption for the
| whole disk at the bandwidth and iops modern SSDs are expected
| to deliver.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Why is this the job of the OS? If we trust the SSD
| ourselves, it should simply accept that and proceed using
| the API as intended.
|
| Because in the event of the crypto being only for show,
| people might blame the software for not warning them.
|
| > I've so far not understood the purpose of the TPM here.
| Why can't the key be derived off a password entered during
| boot?
|
| The general idea behind using the TPM as a crypto HSM was
| to provide at least a basic protection against simple disk
| cloning, i.e. evil-maid attacks.
|
| > It seems wild to even consider software encryption for
| the whole disk at the bandwidth and iops modern SSDs are
| expected to deliver.
|
| CPUs are pretty fast these days at anything crypto, as
| virtually all popular architectures have native AES
| instructions.
| akvadrako wrote:
| The fact that no one else trusts it is good enough reason
| not to use it. Crypto always starts out untrusted as there
| is no way to prove it's secure. Only by standing the test
| of time with widespread use does it gain at least a
| relative advantage.
| [deleted]
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Last time I checked you had to disable System Integrity
| Protection for it to work on Apple Silicon. Hard no for me, using
| macOS's encrypted sparse bundle disk images now.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Why is disabling tivoization a hard no for you?
| paulpauper wrote:
| Just use Bitlocker . Despite being proprietary, it has withstood
| court challenges, indicating no backdoor and much easier and
| reliable than having to deal with utfi, firmware, compatibility,
| and secure boot settings and other issues that may arise with
| VeraCrypt when trying to encrypt the entire drive. Microsoft
| makes it idiot proof to encrypt the drive. This is one of the few
| instances in which the closed source option is better than open
| source.
| PappGaborSandor wrote:
| [dead]
| self_awareness wrote:
| Bitlocker is Windows-only
| villedespommes wrote:
| You could use dislocker on Linux.
| paulpauper wrote:
| if the data is important enough just buy a laptop for
| bitlocker only and then disconnect from the internet after
| installing it.
| 14 wrote:
| As far as I see bitlocker isn't available for windows 10 home
| edition. Unless there is something I am missing. That is why I
| recently started looking at Veracrypt.
| paulpauper wrote:
| then buy pro. If the data is important enough, $100 is
| trivial.
| akvadrako wrote:
| It's certainly on Windows 11 Home edition, but it isn't
| called Bitlocker and has a less powerful GUI than the Pro
| version.
| MikusR wrote:
| Only on supported hardware and your key is automatically
| stored by Microsoft(but can be deleted)
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Last part only if you don't use the CLI.
| loufe wrote:
| Bitlocker requires an internet connection and Windows account.
| Your backup key is sent to a microsoft server. Some people
| would object to the government being able to request your key
| from a server to search your encrypted files. That's exactly
| what the government wants to happen.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| This is wrong. You can set it up with the command line tool
| which neither sends your key nor do you need an account.
| kogir wrote:
| Bitlocker requires a Professional or greater license of
| Windows, but needs neither an internet connection nor a
| Microsoft account.
|
| I have mine setup with TPM + PIN, and have archived the
| recovery keys myself, not stored them with Microsoft.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I don't get it. my comment got heavily downvoted yet the
| objection to my comment is wrong and also downvoted. So ...I
| guess people don't like closed source, period.
| tjrgergw wrote:
| I've been using Truecrypt + syncthing since forever. Serious
| question: why would I move to veracrypt? It seems just a risk
| that something breaks.
| AlphaCerium wrote:
| Apparently Truecrypt has had development shut down in 2014 and
| the devs are now telling people to migrate to Bitlocker as it
| may be insecure: https://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/
| tjrgergw wrote:
| BitLocker - I'm not going to move to some windows-first
| software.
| faiD9Eet wrote:
| Last time I checked the state of TrueCrypt it was 2014. There
| used to be an audit saying "build chain is outdated, but software
| is fine" and an hostile fork named VeraCrypt came to be,
| incorporating a lot of new features. Some people where suspicious
| how many bugs this code might have and whether to use VeraCrypt
| at all.
|
| How much trust do you put on VeraCrypt?
| snailmailman wrote:
| "Hostile fork"? Truecrypt was abandoned. The creator released a
| "decrypt only" version and recommended all users switch to
| different software.
|
| From what I understand, Veracrypt just continued development
| where Truecrypt left off
| faiD9Eet wrote:
| you are right, it was abandoned. I forgot about that.
|
| From my understanding there never was an official successor,
| that's why I consider VeraCrypt a fork.
| SamFromSpace wrote:
| Entirely tangential, but I recently participated in a CTF that
| included a steganography challenge with a True/VeraCrypt volume
| embedded inside a MP4 file. The MP4 file could be mounted just as
| a normal VeraCrypt volume could be.
|
| https://keyj.emphy.de/real-steganography-with-truecrypt/
| yashoulda wrote:
| [dead]
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Has anyone seen legal cases involving hidden partitions?
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| I've used countless encryption "schemes" over the years, from
| True/Vera-Crypt to encrypted sparse bundles/images, and none have
| ever really felt right.
|
| These days i tend to use Cryptomator[0] instead. It accomplishes
| what none of the others could do, which is transparent encryption
| across devices.
|
| With Cryptomator, i simply create a vault somewhere in the cloud,
| stuff data in it, and i can access it from my laptop, phone or
| tablet, and not think much about it. It integrates into the
| normal file browsing APIs, and doesn't get in the way.
|
| Because it does "per file" encryption, it also doesn't need to
| download a 20-100MB chunk from the cloud before decrypting, so
| it's rather fast (depending on file size of course).
|
| Cryptomator is also open source[1], and free on the desktop,
| though the mobile apps costs a one time fee.
|
| [0]: https://cryptomator.org/
|
| [1]: https://github.com/cryptomator
| arsome wrote:
| I used to use similar per-file cloud solutions, but SyncThing
| has been better in every way, especially if you already have a
| server you want to sync to or can use as an encrypted endpoint.
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| I've used syncthing sporadically over the years, but it has
| had very bad iOS support whenever I've tried it.
|
| Mobeus exists, but doesn't integrate into the files app, and
| uses a lot of battery.
|
| I also used Resilio Sync for years, but it appears to have
| more or less died out.
|
| So when it came to finding a replacement I settled on using
| cloud native for synchronization, and simply put encryption
| on top, and for that, Cryptomator is great.
| [deleted]
| geek_at wrote:
| A few years ago I was in a Arma3 Milsim group that hosted
| their own server.
|
| Back then there was no automated way to sync plugins so we
| installed syncthing and told all users to install it too.
|
| We put like 50gigabytes worth of addons on syncthing and the
| users were so much happier because since 50+ people were
| using this syncthing connection, everyone could download with
| full speed from the others as in contrast to the 100mbit/sec
| bandwith of the HTTP server we formerly used.
|
| And nobody had to care about checking versions anymore, the
| syncthing folder was directly synced into the Arma3 plugin
| directory
| jetbalsa wrote:
| That is not a bad model if you completely trust the server
| owners. I feel there are more secure ways, but I suspect if
| a Arma3 server wanted to infect a machine with a bad mod
| they could. so the threat vectors are the same really.
| mdhen wrote:
| I use CryFS combined with SyncThing, perfect solution for my
| needs. Have it set up on linux and android.
| 1696239517 wrote:
| Looks very similar to the 'Crypt' remote offered by Rclone[0]
|
| I use it to store 'per file' encrypted data on Dropbox. (I also
| keep a restic repository on there)
|
| [0]: https://rclone.org/crypt/
| Saris wrote:
| Rclone doesn't work too well on mobile though, which is where
| cryptomator is really nice.
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| I have used rclone with crypt in the past, and it works well,
| but doesn't easily lend itself to being used from mobile
| devices, which is what led me to Cryptomator in the first
| place.
|
| I don't want to rely on having a server running at home,
| which i can then connect to via VPN, in order to download
| encrypted stuff from the cloud. With Cryptomator i can simply
| download from the cloud and decrypt locally.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Gocryptfs is another alternative in the same vein. I've
| switched to it from Cryptomator as it has better Android
| support and is more ergonomic on the command line.
| alwyn wrote:
| What I haven't found a solution for, is being able to
| synchronise and open a gocryptfs with cloud sync on Android.
| Dropbox/Drive/pCloud folders aren't directly accessible or
| mounted in Android. One work-around could be to export a zip
| of the folder from Dropbox/whatever, then extract and open
| that, but that's one-way.
|
| Do you have a solution for this?
| akvadrako wrote:
| I use syncthing for this. But yeah it isnt ideal.
| chuckufarley wrote:
| Likely won't be of much help with the cloud sync angle, but
| for CryFS and GocryptFS support in Droid, you might find
| DroidFS worth a look.
| didntcheck wrote:
| I've not used it myself, but there's also CryFS [1]. It's file-
| level like EncFS or eCryptFS, but uses fixed-size and padded
| cypherfiles to avoid leaking details about your file structure.
| I'm not sure about Cryptomator, but with EncFS it would be
| relatively easy to infer that someone has, say, the Tor browser
| stored in it, by the size and shape of the encrypted files
|
| [1] https://www.cryfs.org/
| riedel wrote:
| Cool, I did not know it, and is a product from a master
| thesis at our university. Have to try it.
|
| People complain about speed in the past :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23469401
|
| Is it usable?
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| CryFS (and gocryptfs) both suffer from the same lack of
| support on iOS, which Cryptomator has, which is the reason
| i'm sticking with it.
|
| As for how it encrypts files, there is a description here : h
| ttps://docs.cryptomator.org/en/1.5/security/architecture/#f..
| .
| alwyn wrote:
| I'm a fan of gocryptfs [1]/cppcryptfs (Windows
| implementation) [2], they also have a fairly unbiased
| comparison [3] with other solutions, including CryFS.
|
| [1] https://nuetzlich.net/gocryptfs/
|
| [2] https://github.com/bailey27/cppcryptfs
|
| [3] https://nuetzlich.net/gocryptfs/comparison/
| stblack wrote:
| I always wonder what really happened with TrueCrypt. What's the
| inside story, there?
|
| I'm not interested in anybody's guess. What happened? WTF
| actually happened?
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Paul Leroux was sentenced to 25 years in June 2020, appellate
| court confirmed the sentence in 2022.
|
| https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca2/20...
| icelancer wrote:
| Didn't he consistently deny being involved in TrueCrypt? E4M
| is closely related, but is there any evidence showing that
| Paul == TrueCrypt? Just curious if there was.
| stef25 wrote:
| There's no proof
| pyuser583 wrote:
| > The district court's decision that immediate video
| sentencing was in defendant's best interest was reasonable
| because defendant was asking for a time-served sentence ...
|
| Time served was 25 years!?!
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Leroux has been in custody since 2012. If he was sentenced
| to 25 years in 2020... he would only have 17 years to
| serve. it's 2023 now, so he has 14 years left.
| jandrese wrote:
| That is wild. How did he have time to maintain TrueCrypt
| while doing all of that crime?
| runjake wrote:
| Paul was what people call a 10x programmer. He was highly
| prolific.
|
| The book Mastermind goes into this a bit.
|
| So do some old web posts straight from Paul himself, if you
| know where and if they are still up.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Has anyone looked up the details of all of this? The DEA
| has been notorious for arresting people overseas and
| indicting them for just participating(i.e. being in the
| same room) in conversations about drug trafficking even
| if those conversations were between DEA agents.
|
| Just a quick glimpse at the Wikipedia page actually talks
| about 5 drugs that seem to me like over the counter
| medicine. What's kinda interesting to me skimming this
| and looking at the references is that the assassins and a
| lot of the operations were Israelis and the whole thing
| was run from Tel Aviv, but there's zero reference to any
| of those people. They are just called the Israeli
| business partners.
| runjake wrote:
| I'm on mobile but there's more info on the Israelis in
| the Mastermind book. Some of them still have public
| LinkedIn profiles.
| oldnet wrote:
| I noticed that US fed agencies work like that - use
| someone for their own games and make it looks like
| success job for own careers.
|
| Some cops tried it in my country as well. These cops
| recieved a middle finger from the court.
|
| Edit: The courts called it 'provocation by police' and
| everyone was freed.
| hosteur wrote:
| He denies involvement with TrueCrypt. Is there any actual
| proof?
| e12e wrote:
| Oh I'd forgotten about this part:
|
| > Le Roux was arrested on 26 September 2012 for conspiracy to
| import narcotics into the United States, and agreed to
| cooperate with authorities in exchange for a lesser sentence
| and immunity to any crimes he might admit to later. He
| subsequently admitted to arranging or participating in seven
| murders, carried out as part of an extensive illegal business
| empire.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux
| perth wrote:
| I've always heard speculation that I believe of some sort of
| NSA involvement. When it was taken down back in the day (yes it
| was pretty much a takedown, the entire website got thrashed..)
| there was a lot of people on Reddit that were speculating that.
| didntcheck wrote:
| The way it was announced was suspicious. Purging the website
| rather than just posting an "unmaintained" notice is weird
| for any FOSS project, but recommending people just use
| Bitlocker sounded like a clear "canary". Like the authors
| were being coerced and decided to burn their reputation on
| purpose rather than comply
| goalieca wrote:
| The "Not Secure Anymore" message likely refers to the weak
| password based key derivation function and verification
| steps. I suspect the NSA and other advanced computing groups
| had means to brute force it and it took the rest of us years
| to figure out the parameters weren't strong enough.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I'm not sure how you're insisting on more than "anybody's
| guess" when that's all the information that is out there
| eitland wrote:
| For anyone who wonders and can tolerate some guessing, here is
| an interesting starting point:
|
| https://magazine.atavist.com/he-always-had-a-dark-side/
| billfruit wrote:
| The the article may have something interesting to say, but it
| seems to spend paragraphs upon paragraphs on the amateur
| sleuthing that the article authour did, rather than come to
| the point quickly.
| eitland wrote:
| In other words what many of us would call an interesting
| article :-)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I had no idea, that explains a lot. Thanks.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Absolutely wild. Thank you for contributing this!
| goombacloud wrote:
| For regular Linux users you can do: sudo touch
| /etc/udisks2/tcrypt.conf sudo systemctl restart udisks2
|
| and then any veracrypt volumes can be used in Nautilus or GNOME
| Disks similar to LUKS volumes.
| [deleted]
| LWIRVoltage wrote:
| I have followed Veracrypt closely over the years and , while it
| works very well and seems to be a very capable effective option-
| I wish the MBR/BIOS vs UEFI thing wasn't a limitation
|
| For those who don't know, -and this is more of the result of the
| EFI Boot partition scheme- before that, for MBR systems ,one can
| use Veracrypt to encrypt the entire System Drive - and this
| allowed a unique option that I have not seen anything else ever
| able to replicate- it enables an option that lets one hide an
| entire OS-
|
| The Hidden OS option is restricted to legacy boot mode- and
| that's being more and more dissuaded in general- So i fear the
| airtightness of the Hidden-OS capability will no longer be
| reachable for consumers.
|
| I had seen one effort on it - https://portswigger.net/daily-
| swig/russian-doll-steganograph...
|
| and https://i.blackhat.com/eu-18/Thu-Dec-6/eu-18-Schaub-
| Perfectl...
|
| However, I have since then not seen anything on this sort of
| capability- and no other encryption software has focused on
| steganography and encryption/plausible deniability capabilities
| to this level.
| somat wrote:
| It should be a common thing, I am not all that sure about the
| offerings on linux. But the openbsd project offers full disk
| encryption and a bootloader that handles it well.
|
| Actually, this may be a common mistake I make. On openbsd if
| the project says something works it will usually be simple to
| set up and have a nice documentation. So I then think "Well if
| the tiny openbsd project can do it, it must be this easy
| everywhere" which is not true at all. The two cases that come
| to mind were booting off a softraid volume(hopefully this one
| is fixed) and setting up a netflow source. both of which proved
| to be trivial on openbsd and a huge pain in the ass on linux.
| The other common mistake I make is to use the openbsd man
| pages(they are just better) on linux and wonder why nothing is
| working right.
| NetworkPerson wrote:
| I love it, but it's not an answer to normal people yet. The 0.01%
| of us who know and understand encryption, cool. But getting ready
| for the main world? Bitlocker lets people click a button and walk
| away. Administrators make a few small changes and have the whole
| fleet bitlockered with centrally managed recovery keys should
| anyone have an issue. Does Veracrypt offer better security? Yes.
| Would I be thrilled to roll it to my clients? Yes. Would it be an
| absolute nightmare to deploy and manage across an organization?
| Yes.
|
| I'm sad because this is great and the answer to much but stands
| no chance when you move past the "single user who is IT literate"
| user group.
| Groxx wrote:
| Bitlocker for an equivalent level of security (password at
| boot) is _way_ more confusing and _way_ more error prone in my
| experience. I know what I 'm looking for and understand all the
| terms in use and I had to try three times, and lost access to
| my drive once.
|
| No way in hell would I recommend it to less technical people
| (except default settings, which works fine but offers near zero
| security against extremely common things like theft). Bitlocker
| is by far the least user-friendly OS-provided I've ever seen -
| it's so bad I have to assume it's being intentionally ruined.
| upon_drumhead wrote:
| Is it better? Even truecrypt's developers (which this is based
| on) recommend moving to bit locker now,
| https://truecrypt.sourceforge.net
| kijin wrote:
| That was 9 years ago, not "now". BitLocker was the only
| alternative that they could recommend back then.
|
| It's possible that whatever vulnerability the TrueCrypt
| developers were alluding to still lurks in the VeraCrypt
| codebase, but the chances seem pretty low. VeraCrypt uses
| much stronger encryption methods, it has addressed all the
| issues raised in the original TrueCrypt audit as well as a
| separate audit of its own code, and the latest version isn't
| even backward-compatible with TrueCrypt volumes.
| cypress66 wrote:
| No, recommending bitlocker back then was basically a joke
| to anyone at that time, an obvious way of telling you
| something wrong.
|
| The obvious recommendation back then was LUKS. And even if
| there were no alternatives they're not going to recommend
| you a proprietary solution with a high chance of being
| backdoored. They'll just say to use "other software".
| kijin wrote:
| The majority of TrueCrypt users were on Windows and
| needed a GUI. Backdoors or not, BitLocker was the only
| comparable alternative.
|
| Recommending BitLocker might have been a signal to
| hackers in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, but
| IIRC the announcement also included a detailed tutorial
| for setting up BitLocker that was actually quite helpful
| to anyone whose threat model mostly concrerned thieves,
| corporate spies, and non-Five Eyes intelligence agencies.
| 13415 wrote:
| This probably has nothing to do with vulnerabilities in the
| source code, it has to do with the observations that Mounir
| Idrassi took over truecrypt very fast when it was shut
| down, yet was not known in cryptography circles prior to
| this at all, and his company idrix.fr looks _a lot_ like a
| typical DGSE shell company. It is unclear what kind of
| contracts it had (if any) before it dedicated seemingly
| most of its time to Veracrypt.
|
| Of course, it would be the binaries that are problem, if
| there is one. If you vet the source code and compile it
| yourself, there shouldn't be any issue. Note that the
| French government has long history of being anti-
| cryptography for end-consumers.
|
| I personally wouldn't even touch Veracrypt with a long
| pole. But that's just my personal opinion.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Do you believe the audit was compromised as well?
|
| https://ostif.org/the-veracrypt-audit-results/
| rkagerer wrote:
| _the latest version isn 't even backward-compatible with
| TrueCrypt volumes_
|
| Are you sure? I thought it could open them in read-only
| mode. Here's a 2023 post suggesting it's supposed to still
| be able to open TC 6.0+ files, though the user in question
| is having trouble: https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/disc
| ussion/technical/thr...
| two_in_one wrote:
| LOL, that was when they _removed_ all encryption in their
| last, final update. That was part of the deal probably, but
| they made it so obvious that nobody took it seriously.
| Everybody got the message: something is going wrong.
|
| Since then truecrypt was carefully reviewed, some bugs were
| found, but no backdoors. It was forked and veracrypt is one
| of those forks. It has enhanced security which makes it
| annoying to use. For example to disconnect the drive one
| needs to enter admin's password. That's done because
| veracrypt doesn't store it. On one hand it makes it more
| secure, on the other entering passwords many times in public
| makes it less.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > LOL, that was when they _removed_ all encryption in their
| last, final update
|
| That's was the time the other Truecrypt contributors
| learned that Paul le Roux was in federal custody[1]. Most
| likely they nukes encryption & gave dire warnings as a
| scorched earth play to avoid the possibility of an FBI-
| authored binary release of TrueCrypt, since Paul controlled
| the website and the infrastructure, IIRC.
|
| 1. Warning: linked story is a 3-part longform story that
| can cause 30-60m to vanish from your day.
| https://magazine.atavist.com/he-always-had-a-dark-side/
| LoganDark wrote:
| > For example to disconnect the drive one needs to enter
| admin's password. That's done because veracrypt doesn't
| store it.
|
| What? For me, VeraCrypt can mount and unmount volumes (on
| Windows 11) without ever prompting for UAC. It could also
| do the same on my other, Windows 10 PC.
| two_in_one wrote:
| On Ubuntu it requires admin pas on every action. Like
| mount/unmount. On truecrypt it's on click. Sadly they are
| not compatible. Not sure, did veracrypt pass external
| audit like truecrypt?
| BeetleB wrote:
| Veracrypt is a fork of TrueCrypt, which _was_ used by lots of
| low tech people (I know some personally). For certain use
| cases, it 's pretty straightforward to use. I suspect that at
| that time, it was the simplest highly secure SW that was
| available to people: Free and open source.
|
| Comparing with Bitlocker is silly - its source is closed, and
| that's almost an automatic "untrustworthy" for many. It also is
| Windows only.
| kinleyd wrote:
| Veracrypt works on Linux too. I switched over when Truecrypt
| was orphaned.
| genezeta wrote:
| I'd say they meant _Bitlocker_ is Windows only.
| kinleyd wrote:
| Ah, you're right. I realized that was probably what was
| meant after I'd posted.
|
| I never realized there was so much history - just thought
| the app had been orphaned for the usual mundane reasons.
| I've got to read that book!
| jolux wrote:
| > that's almost an automatic "untrustworthy" for many
|
| "Many" is probably overstating things relative to the full
| audience for Bitlocker
| [deleted]
| Shorel wrote:
| I don't think the target of Veracrypt is to be used by
| corporations.
|
| Almost by definition, corporations will sell their souls to MS
| if that means "accountability", that means someone to blame
| when things go wrong. Not if, when.
|
| Just the fact Veracrypt exists and can be used by that 0.01% is
| enough. It is already useful beyond expectations.
| ciabattabread wrote:
| I use VeraCrypt on Windows to store my bank statements and other
| financial records, but recently, I've started moving my files
| over to the Mac ecosystem. Considering my Mac comes with SSD
| encryption, is it really necessary for me to continue using
| VeraCrypt?
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Probably not. What is your threat model? Full disk encryption
| only solves part of an overall threat model. The biggest
| difference between VeraCrypt and FileVault is that one is open
| source and auditable. FileVault does have some publicly
| available technical whitepapers, however Apple has not released
| the source code. So aside from black box testing FileVault
| itself, you'll just have to trust that the engineers at Apple
| did a good job. Otherwise the differences are largely the same:
| how long is your passphrase, where do you store that, etc.
| https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2012/08/06/analysis-of-f...
| https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/374.pdf
| yomlica8 wrote:
| I was sort of surprised to find that standard crypt-setup in
| linux actually supports opening true/veracrypt volumes. It
| doesn't support creating them as near as I can tell though.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| The reason I knew Trucrypt was watertight was because the source
| code got fully audited and because the NSA got so squirmy about
| it.
|
| Has there been any equivalent audit of Veracrypt? Or should we
| basically assume it's been compromised/backdoored.
| I_Byte wrote:
| Veracrypt 1.18 was audited in 2016 by the Open Source
| Technology Improvement Fund [0]. It is incredibly unlikely that
| a random NSA backdoor is sitting around on a high profile open
| source project like Veracrypt. If you are still skeptical you
| are free to take a look at all of the source yourself [1].
|
| [0] - https://ostif.org/the-veracrypt-audit-results/
|
| [1] - https://github.com/veracrypt/VeraCrypt
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Development seems to have moved to Github. This website has the
| latest release in 2022. The Github project has much newer
| releases: https://github.com/veracrypt/VeraCrypt/releases. Today
| basically.
| deanc wrote:
| On the downloads page [1] the latest release is in sync with
| Github
|
| [1] https://veracrypt.fr/en/Downloads.html
| vishnudeva wrote:
| Amazing tool, but I'll always (unreasonably and unfairly) hate it
| for locking away a bunch of my data because I forgot an absurdly
| long password which I didn't note down anywhere. Needless to say,
| lesson learned.
| ycuser2 wrote:
| I have an old WinRAR archive which password I have forgotten.
| Who knows, maybe in 50 years we will be able to read the
| encrypted stuff.
| ct0 wrote:
| tough lesson, but i hope you use a password manager now.
| pollux66 wrote:
| [flagged]
| T3RMINATED wrote:
| [dead]
| Ayesh wrote:
| Using it for a few years now, and I'd hesitate not one bit to
| recommend. It's not as "technical" as said in comments either
| tbh. But us in HN are not qualified to call it non tech friendly
| I guess.
|
| Performance is great, nearly "metal" SSD speeds. I use it with a
| hidden partition of an external HDD, and works great too, once I
| got Windows to stop asking me to formally that partition.
|
| The only feature I wish it could have is better Yubikey (and
| alike) integration. I can use those static passwords as an
| encryption key, but I'd need something better.
| _d3Xt3r_ wrote:
| > Performance is great, nearly "metal" SSD speeds.
|
| But how does that compare exactly, performance wise, against
| Bitlocker and LUKS? (assuming similar strength encryption
| algorithms are selected)
| baxuz wrote:
| Bitlocker is Microsoft's closed-source product. How can you
| be sure it doesn't have backdoors?
| shim__ wrote:
| That question is pointless if you're using windows
| huhtenberg wrote:
| In practice, it is most certainly not pointless.
|
| Given two USB drives, one encrypted with BitLocker and
| another with TC or VC, chances of master key recovery by
| Microsoft are definitely not the same.
| maccard wrote:
| > In practice, it is most certainly not pointless ....
| chances of master key recovery by Microsoft are
| definitely not the same.
|
| I don't think those two sentences hold water when put
| together. _In practice_ , if your risk is master key
| leakage and theft of the encrypted data by microsoft, you
| shouldn't be using windows. If you suspect that, MS can
| have a kernel mode driver masquerading as anything else,
| and it can just siphon your master key whenever you enter
| it.
| DarkmSparks wrote:
| And now that ms auth is apparently mostly compromised,
| extend microsoft to any threat actor in the wild.
|
| I like VC for the portability of the encrypted .tc files.
| Keep all my backups as tc files, and recovered from more
| than one failure using them.
|
| Once had an issue where dropbox corrupted the duplicates,
| so dont use dropbox anymore.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| >ms auth is apparently mostly compromised
|
| just gonna drop that like that aint a $10k+ implication,
| gonna need a src or ref thanks
|
| unless you mean by 3letters, which dont exactly give
| their backdoors to randoms.
|
| randoms aint coming across 3letter's backdoors, not
| active/modern ones anyway
| lapinot wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37702095
|
| it's probably more than a $10k implication..
| Ayesh wrote:
| I haven't used BitLocker or anything else, so I can't really
| compare.
|
| Veracrypt has a neat benchmark tool so you know the speed
| beforehand. I suppose most CPUs have native support for the
| popular algorithms, so the bottleneck really is the disk, not
| CPU itself or the software.
| pulse7 wrote:
| There is still an open issue in VeraCrypt
| (https://github.com/veracrypt/VeraCrypt/issues/136) because
| of which BitLocker is much faster on SSDs then VeraCrypt...
| But if you don't need those speads, VeraCrypt is still
| great...
| huhtenberg wrote:
| To nitpick - on _NVmE_ drives, not SSDs.
|
| The principal difference is the native speed of raw IO -
| NVmEs are an order of magnitude faster than SSDs. TC/VC
| don't use hardware acceleration, so all the encryption work
| falls on the CPU. On a machine with a reasonably modern
| CPU, TC/VC run nearly at drive's native speed.
| seanw444 wrote:
| > TC/VC don't use hardware acceleration
|
| I assume by that you mean it doesn't use the AES
| instructions? That's odd to me.
| fluoridation wrote:
| No, that's wrong. VeraCrypt uses AES-NI when available.
| It seems the source of the issue is the IO design of the
| driver, which causes unnecessary context switches when
| operating on a raw device.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Okay that makes more sense.
| [deleted]
| aeyes wrote:
| > I can use those static passwords as an encryption key, but
| I'd need something better.
|
| I use static password plus a keyfile. Since the keyfile can be
| anything you can use something innocent looking which you just
| have laying around on the machine, like a picture.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > you can use something innocent looking which you just have
| laying around on the machine, like a picture.
|
| This works well on a file you decrypt often. What can happen
| with infrequently used files is that many years pass, you
| upgrade computers and/or operating systems, remember to copy
| your encrypted volumes. When you try to decrypt your volume,
| you remember the passcode, but forget which "innocuous" file
| you used as a keyfile, even after you boot up your old
| computer you had handed down to your cousin.
| aeyes wrote:
| Well, the same happens to me with passwords which I don't
| use for a long time.
|
| You can use any file, even something you can quickly
| download from the Internet. Like the Windows 3.11 file
| manager icon or your favorite Linux torrent. Only the first
| 1024 bytes are used so be careful with file types which
| have a big header.
| somat wrote:
| If you can make a key file You can put it on a removable sd
| card and make a keydrive. This introduces a nice air gap to
| the key, only needing to be broken when unlocking the drive.
|
| There are better ways, often the the key can be stored on a
| hardware token(yubi key etc... ). which presumably offers
| additional security guarantees around copying the key. but a
| keydrive is a very easy way to start.
|
| Off tangent(I doubt you will be using openbsd), but the
| openbsd encryption layer offers some nice features around
| using keydrives,
| http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#softraidFDE
| Reviving1514 wrote:
| I've seen reports of corrupted files and that has always
| stopped me from using it. I even paid for the Android app just
| to support them.
|
| Is file corruption still an issue?
| kristofferg wrote:
| Ime. not more than any other encryption tool. Just don't skip
| or delay those backups.
| Ayesh wrote:
| > still
|
| Never had problems. FWIW, I'm using AES/256 bit keys/HMAC
| SHA-512 on all of my volumes.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Functionally, how could anything be better than a static
| password?
| Ayesh wrote:
| I meant the long static passwords Yubikeys "type" when you
| touch the button when plugged in. It's just a static long
| text that has no context.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Sorry, I know what you mean. I'm saying anything like
| challenge-response would still be a password functionally
| if you're decrypting a static file.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| BitLocker and LUKS both support TPM for key storage which
| VeraCrypt does not.
|
| The TPM acts as a second factor (assume PIN is required); if
| you pulled the disk out and placed it another PC you cannot
| brute force the plaintext password, even using the $5 wrench
| method.
| hexfish wrote:
| I would be very careful with placing my trust in TPM:
| https://www.secura.com/blog/tpm-sniffing-attacks-against-
| non....
| KAMSPioneer wrote:
| Your parent comment said he was assuming a PIN was used
| to seal the TPM, and the attacking the link would have
| failed if the TPM had a PIN set, no? I agree though that
| using a TPM without a PIN gives little in the way of data
| protection. Not nothing, but little.
| nuker wrote:
| Sniffing the bus can be defeated by using encrypted
| comms. It is disabled by Windows for some reason, but it
| works as designed in other secure boot implementations. I
| hope :)
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| does that mean if morherboard goes kaput, so does all my
| data? I have 7 layers of backup, but still interesting to
| know.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| No, it typically generates a recovery key which you can
| keep offline (or discard and live dangerously).
| pmontra wrote:
| > even using the $5 wrench method
|
| I understand the XKCD reference but I don't understand why
| it does not apply to this case. Does that mean that you
| can't move your disk to a new machine of yours?
| alias_neo wrote:
| Because if you took the disk, even if you $5-wrenched the
| pin out of someone, you don't have the TPM hardware to
| make use of it.
|
| As for the second question, I suppose it depends on the
| implementation; I suspect there is a way to migrate and
| transfer the keys for the device for the person who
| already has access to all of the factors.
|
| If I use a Yubikey and LUKS for example, I can re-use the
| Yubikey if I move the disk to another machine. I'm not
| sure how this would work for integrated TPMs and
| Bitlocker (I don't use Windows), but I believe they have
| recovery key-files you could use.
| forty wrote:
| > Because if you took the disk, even if you $5-wrenched
| the pin out of someone, you don't have the TPM hardware
| to make use of it.
|
| I sincerely hope that the guy with the $5 wrench knows
| this and don't continue hitting until he has the key...
| mkopec wrote:
| Indeed, it seems that having another unlock option might
| be preferable. If you value your own live over the
| secrets, that is.
| pmontra wrote:
| If there is no way to transfer the disk to another
| machine, it's not a disk I want to use. I think that
| there are very few use cases for losing all the data when
| a machine dies.
|
| And if there is a procedure to let me move the disk to a
| new machine, somebody can wrench me until I perform that
| procedure for them.
| mkopec wrote:
| With LUKS you can enroll an extra auth option in addition
| to TPM, like a password or a FIDO2 token.
| alias_neo wrote:
| > And if there is a procedure to let me move the disk to
| a new machine, somebody can wrench me until I perform
| that procedure for them.
|
| I think the implication is that they (the attacker) don't
| have the machine, or you, or whatever "thing" you
| have/use to unlock it.
|
| If someone stole your disk, or took a copy of it, they
| can't offline attack it.
|
| An external hardware device seems preferable for this
| scenario; if someone steals/snatches your laptop, they
| won't have your Yubikey or whatever.
|
| In any scenario where the wrenching is an option, I
| suspect all bets are off, but if wrenching is a real
| risk, and whatever you're protecting is worth taking a
| wrenching for (as opposed to just giving it up at the
| threat of a wrenching), there should probably be some
| tougher protections which make it clear that the
| wrenching will gain an attacker nothing, and hopefully
| save you from it to begin with.
|
| I'm not sure what or how that would work.
| dwattttt wrote:
| For Bitlocker (and I imagine other tools which support
| TPM keying), a recovery password is generated in addition
| to the TPM unlock key. If the motherboard goes kaput you
| dig out the long key to unlock it, assuming you kept it
| somewhere safe (speaking as someone who has had to dig
| through a pile of old USBs to get access back to a disk).
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Sounds as though this is where the $5 wrench would work
| just fine.
| mkopec wrote:
| It's a matter of priorities, I guess?
|
| If you want to you can just not save the recovery
| password. In that case I guess they'll just beat you to
| death with that $5 wrench.
| maattdd wrote:
| VeraCrypt is good but it doesn't work well with syncing, because
| changing any bit of the disk image invalidate the whole disk
| hash. Cryptomator works a bit differently (it changes the
| structure/names, but store the underlying encrypted files as
| files) so you can sync file by file.
| aborsy wrote:
| Veracrypt is a disk encryption tool, not for syncing!
| maattdd wrote:
| I don't think you've understood my comment.
| aborsy wrote:
| I have done this and been there before.
|
| Dropbox syncs the deltas in LUKS and veracrypt disks. A
| change of a bit in plaintext changes the blocks that are
| involved, and only those blocks are updated. But most other
| sync tools don't handle it properly.
|
| That was around a decade ago. Today, one would use
| cryptomator, rclone, gocryptfs rtc.
| MikusR wrote:
| And propper syncing tools can sync only the changed parts.
| maattdd wrote:
| Do you know a syncing tool which would work with a VeraCrypt
| image? (rsync algo doesn't for example)
| Groxx wrote:
| Rsync syncs only differing blocks of data (not whole files)
| by default - it's pretty much the reason it is so popular.
|
| There are a lot of ways to lose that though. No rsync able
| to run and calculate block checksums on the other machine
| -> no block syncing. Change a byte in a file in an
| encrypted volume -> it might copy-on-write and make a
| wholly new encrypted "file" with everything different in
| the final encrypted data. Etc, it depends on a bunch of
| stuff interacting in ways that they might have legitimate
| reasons to not support, particularly with security/privacy
| sensitive stuff.
|
| Not sure what you're encountering, but if it's important to
| you there are a few ways to troubleshoot it. It might be
| possible to get it working.
| aeyes wrote:
| Works fine with rsync here.
| apankrat wrote:
| This can be remedied by using tools that can do block-wise
| (delta) copying of large files, e.g.
| https://bvckup2.com/kb/delta-copying
| ale42 wrote:
| I think that VeraCrypt and Cryptomator have very different use
| cases. And VeraCrypt has features like hidden volumes (not that
| most people would ever need those).
| nuker wrote:
| Can it set-up /boot volume encryption and using of TPM for
| unattended reboots? Thats the deal breaker feature.
| iofiiiiiiiii wrote:
| I once asked the developers about this and they did not seem to
| understand what the point of a TPM even is, unfortunately.
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