Full Disk Encryption Survey

Please vote for you favorite Full Disk Encryption FDE solution at the
following URL:
http://security-basics.blogspot.com/2007/07/full-disk-encryp tion-survey.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/2oy7k4


Please consider the following when voting:
1. Easy of use
2. Transparency to the user
3. Directory integration (e.g. integration with Active Directory or
LDAP)
4. Key Management (Backup, recovery, archiving)
5. Password recovery
6. Cost
7. User Interface
8. Reliability
9. Performance
10. Overall Functionality

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

"Saqib Ali" wrote in message
news:1183960591.485338.97740@r34g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
> Please vote for you favorite Full Disk Encryption FDE solution at the
> following URL:
> http://security-basics.blogspot.com/2007/07/full-disk-encryp tion-survey.html
> or
> http://tinyurl.com/2oy7k4


In order for any product to be favorite requires that user also report
what OTHER similar products they trialed or used. A user that has only
used one FDE product doesn't have a favorite. I have one sister, so the
joke goes "you're my favorite sister". You do not let the user report
what other FDE products they have used or how many total FDE products
they have used (which must be greater than one). The survey is
worthless without this info.

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

"Vanguard" wrote in message
news:xLidnQKKLosTTwzbnZ2dnUVZ_oKhnZ2d@comcast.com...
> "Saqib Ali" wrote in message
> news:1183960591.485338.97740@r34g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
>> Please vote for you favorite Full Disk Encryption FDE solution at the
>> following URL:
>> http://security-basics.blogspot.com/2007/07/full-disk-encryp tion-survey.html
>> or
>> http://tinyurl.com/2oy7k4
>
>
> In order for any product to be favorite requires that user also report
> what OTHER similar products they trialed or used. A user that has only
> used one FDE product doesn't have a favorite. I have one sister, so the
> joke goes "you're my favorite sister". You do not let the user report
> what other FDE products they have used or how many total FDE products they
> have used (which must be greater than one). The survey is worthless
> without this info.
>

I'll be keeping an eye on this survey, as I'm currently researching an FDE
solutions for about 20 of our users laptops. So far I've downloaded and
tested PGP WDE, next is CompuSec, I have a trial of SafeGuard Easy on order
(hopefully arrive in the post next week), and I'm arranging a conference
call with someone from PointSec to setup a trial of that product.

If anyone has any experience with any of the or other products, I'd be
interested in your views. Our requirements are:
Full Disk Encryption
Pre Boot Authentication
Activate Directory Integration
Easy Deployment (MSI/group policy)
Automated Encryption (no user intervention)

Cheers

Ben

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

benb wrote:


> I'll be keeping an eye on this survey, as I'm currently researching an FDE
> solutions for about 20 of our users laptops. So far I've downloaded and
> tested PGP WDE, next is CompuSec, I have a trial of SafeGuard Easy on order
> (hopefully arrive in the post next week), and I'm arranging a conference
> call with someone from PointSec to setup a trial of that product.
>
> If anyone has any experience with any of the or other products, I'd be
> interested in your views.


Trivial: CompuSec is insecure by design. Just create a password reset floppy
on a second machine, start the recovery at the first, insert it, and there
you go. A trivial proof that they must have stored the key on the encrypted
disk as well.

SafeGuard Easy... well, has this shit become working now? On two test
machines I saw the boot loader completely crashing, totally ignoring any
keyboard response, or not accepting any of the correct passwords.

> Our requirements are:

> Full Disk Encryption
> Pre Boot Authentication
> Activate Directory Integration
> Easy Deployment (MSI/group policy)
> Automated Encryption (no user intervention)

Hm... what about actual security? In terms of encryption this means to only
Open Source software, due to a matter of trust and verification of the
implementation. CompuSec has already been mentioned. SafeGuard Easy has been
proven to be horrible insecure, f.e. not properly locking memory regions
and then letting the keys being swapped out.

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

"Sebastian G." wrote in message
news:5fo1jiF328qaaU1@mid.dfncis.de...
> benb wrote:
>
>
> Trivial: CompuSec is insecure by design. Just create a password reset
> floppy
> on a second machine, start the recovery at the first, insert it, and there
> you go. A trivial proof that they must have stored the key on the
> encrypted
> disk as well.

Yeah I tested it at home last night and didn't like it at all. There are a
number of other failings as well. Such as only allowing 1 user login, if a
consultant sends a machine in for repair, it would be useful to be able to
login without them having to expose their password. Another is only allowing
alphanumerical charactors in the login name, our users logon to the domain
as joe.bloggs, but they couldn't use this to login to CompuSec as it
contains a period, so its another username for them to remember. There is no
windows/directory service synchronisation, so it means another password for
users to remember, increasing the likihood of users writing down passwords
somewhere.

> SafeGuard Easy... well, has this shit become working now? On two test
> machines I saw the boot loader completely crashing, totally ignoring any
> keyboard response, or not accepting any of the correct passwords.

Thanks for the warning, I was going to install it on my laptop to test, but
I think I'll use a spare now, until I know it works! I've heard from other
people that it is stable, and offers all of the requirements listed below.

>> Our requirements are:
>
>> Full Disk Encryption
>> Pre Boot Authentication
>> Activate Directory Integration
>> Easy Deployment (MSI/group policy)
>> Automated Encryption (no user intervention)
>
> Hm... what about actual security? In terms of encryption this means to
> only
> Open Source software, due to a matter of trust and verification of the
> implementation. CompuSec has already been mentioned. SafeGuard Easy has
> been
> proven to be horrible insecure, f.e. not properly locking memory regions
> and then letting the keys being swapped out.

I assumed that most of the products mentioned used at least AES 128, and so
were fairly equal in that respect. Certainly all the datasheets for PGP WDE,
SafeGuard Easy, PointSec & CompuSec state that they are capable of AES 256,
and PointSec & SafeGuard say they are FIPS 140-2 compliant.

My major reason for looking into this is in the event that one of our
consultants has a laptop stolen, and someone might be able to retrieve
clients confidential information from the hard disk. We're not a goverment
organisation, bank or anything, but it would damage the company's reputation
if a client were to find their information had been lost/made public!

Ben

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

Post removed (X-No-Archive: yes)

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

Juergen Nieveler wrote:


>>> Hm... what about actual security? In terms of encryption this means
>>> to only Open Source software, due to a matter of trust and
>>> verification of the implementation. CompuSec has already been
>>> mentioned. SafeGuard Easy has been proven to be horrible insecure,
>>> f.e. not properly locking memory regions and then letting the keys
>>> being swapped out.
>
> Which is totally and utterly meaningless in a switched-off laptop, which
> is what SGE is designed to protect. All full-disc-encryption packages
> have the "weakness" that they allow data to be accessed when the laptop
> is on (even any Linux implementation) - after all, that's what they're
> designed for.


It was one example from the non-FDE products from Ultimaco provides. Over
the years we've seen many such implementation errors, and one really can't
reasonably trust the vendor for now having created a proper implementation.

>(that of course was compiled by a

> self-written compiler, as you can't trust the compiler software
> either....)


The issue about checking the correctness of the implementation. That means
not just the cipher, but also the key management (including key creation and
key destruction) and the rest (f.e. that it doesn't store a backup of the
key somewhere else). Didn't we learn something from PGP 5.x?

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

Post removed (X-No-Archive: yes)

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

Juergen Nieveler wrote:

> "Sebastian G." wrote:
>
>> The issue about checking the correctness of the implementation. That
>> means not just the cipher, but also the key management (including key
>> creation and key destruction) and the rest (f.e. that it doesn't store
>> a backup of the key somewhere else). Didn't we learn something from
>> PGP 5.x?
>
> AFAIK the BSI checked SGE before allowing the Bundeswehr to use it for
> confidential documents, and so did NATO.

>

> Of course, it all depends on your personal level of paranoia - even if
> a product is secure enough to encrypt state secrets and
> multi-billion-dollar trade information, is it secure enough for you? ;-)

Two words: Microsoft Windows

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

On Mon, 09 Jul 2007 05:56:31 -0000, Saqib Ali wrote:

> Please consider the following when voting:
> 1. Easy of use

Truecrypt

> 2. Transparency to the user

Truecrypt

> 3. Directory integration (e.g. integration with Active Directory or
> LDAP)

Truecrypt

> 4. Key Management (Backup, recovery, archiving)

Truecrypt

> 5. Password recovery

Why the hell would I want that?

> 6. Cost

Free OK? Truecrypt

> 7. User Interface

Truecrypt

> 8. Reliability

Truecrypt

> 9. Performance

Truecrypt

> 10. Overall Functionality

Truecrypt

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

Post removed (X-No-Archive: yes)

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

On Jul 23, 10:08 am, Juergen Nieveler
wrote:
> Ari wrote:
> >> 10. Overall Functionality
>
> > Truecrypt
>
> Except that we're talking about FULL disk encryption
>
> Juergen Nieveler
> --
> Superoxymoron: Government worker

I'd bring to the table Pointsec - we use this and it's good and scales
to the enterprise for key recovery etc, and also potentially MS
Bitlocker in Vista. Not used the latter, obviously treat with
caution, but it does seem to be ticking the boxes so far from brief
conversations with our architects...

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

On 23 Jul 2007 09:08:45 GMT, Juergen Nieveler wrote:

> Ari wrote:
>
>>> 10. Overall Functionality
>>
>> Truecrypt
>
> Except that we're talking about FULL disk encryption
>
> Juergen Nieveler

In-excluding OS?

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

Post removed (X-No-Archive: yes)

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

Post removed (X-No-Archive: yes)

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

On 24 Jul 2007 19:12:49 GMT, Juergen Nieveler wrote:

> Ari wrote:
>
>>>> Truecrypt
>>>
>>> Except that we're talking about FULL disk encryption
>>>
>>
>> In-excluding OS?
>
> Excluding the OS is a bad idea IMHO.
>
> It is often argued that encrypting known files is bad because of known-
> plaintext-attacks, however not encrypting the system partition allows
> an attacker to inject files while the machine is not running.

Fair enough.

> Simply mount the HD on another machine, put the files onto the disk,
> and make sure that the files are run on startup by putting a link into
> the startup-folder of the user profile.
>
> Juergen Nieveler

Please repeat, I missed the point, Thx for the info.

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

I hate to blow my own trumpet but have you thought about SafeBoot
(www.safeboot.com)?

In my biased opinion it works better than the other products you're
looking at - for only 20 machines you'll not need some of the more
advanced stuff like AD integration, webhelpdesk etc, but you might
find those features technically interesting.

S.

On Jul 24, 9:58 pm, Ari wrote:
> On 24 Jul 2007 19:12:49 GMT, Juergen Nieveler wrote:
>
> > Ari wrote:
>
> >>>> Truecrypt
>
> >>> Except that we're talking about FULL disk encryption
>
> >> In-excluding OS?
>
> > Excluding the OS is a bad idea IMHO.
>
> > It is often argued that encrypting known files is bad because of known-
> > plaintext-attacks, however not encrypting the system partition allows
> > an attacker to inject files while the machine is not running.
>
> Fair enough.
>
> > Simply mount the HD on another machine, put the files onto the disk,
> > and make sure that the files are run on startup by putting a link into
> > the startup-folder of the user profile.
>
> > Juergen Nieveler
>
> Please repeat, I missed the point, Thx for the info.

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:23:22 -0000, SafeBoot Simon wrote:

> I hate to blow my own trumpet but

You really don't hate too?

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

On Jul 25, 11:56 am, Ari wrote:
> On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:23:22 -0000, SafeBoot Simon wrote:
> > I hate to blow my own trumpet but
>
> You really don't hate too?

It galls me to have to lower myself to marketing.. but hey, whatever
helps.. ;-)

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 04:23:56 -0000, SafeBoot Simon wrote:

> On Jul 25, 11:56 am, Ari wrote:
>> On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:23:22 -0000, SafeBoot Simon wrote:
>>> I hate to blow my own trumpet but
>>
>> You really don't hate too?
>
> It galls me to have to lower myself to marketing.. but hey, whatever
> helps.. ;-)

lol
--
"You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself"
Ken Thompson "Reflections on Trusting Trust"
http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

Just do not create a password reset floppy and you'll be fine. Make an mbr
backup with an external software. Free compusec allows one to create a
temporary service password. On login you have got 2 seconds to press F1
where you can set service password. Login is "Service". The password expires
automatically when user logs in with their login.

Re: Full Disk Encryption Survey

se wrote:

> Just do not create a password reset floppy and you'll be fine. Make an mbr
> backup with an external software. Free compusec allows one to create a
> temporary service password. On login you have got 2 seconds to press F1
> where you can set service password. Login is "Service". The password expires
> automatically when user logs in with their login.

You can create a password reset floppy from any installation, and the worst
about Free CompuSec is that it will work on any other machine.