Local Encryption ... Why Not?
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@scottalanmiller said:
But a backdoor is designed to defeat the encryption, it's basically an "off switch." It means that potentially anyone has access and that the encryption wasn't to prevent theft. If there are backdoors, what was the encryption for?
My assumption is that only the company itself (such as Apple) and the government have access to this backdoor.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
But a backdoor is designed to defeat the encryption, it's basically an "off switch." It means that potentially anyone has access and that the encryption wasn't to prevent theft. If there are backdoors, what was the encryption for?
My assumption is that only the company itself (such as Apple) and the government have access to this backdoor.
Why would you assume that? What makes that even remotely likely?
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@scottalanmiller said:
Why would you assume that? What makes that even remotely likely?
You think random people would just have access to it?
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Backdoors, by their very nature, tend to spread. They are difficult to hide for one thing as the code, even closed code, gives them away if studied. And once exposed they are unstoppable. All it takes is one person being aware of them and telling someone else and all security is disabled almost instantly and automatically. Barracuda tried this, for example, and for a little while only the bad guys knew about it. Now it is public knowledge and anyone can look up how to backdoor through their firewalls.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Why would you assume that? What makes that even remotely likely?
You think random people would just have access to it?
I think that is effectively certain.
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Just look at Juniper in the news last week!
Someone put a backdoor in their system - sure it took Juniper 7 years to find it, but that doesn't mean other hackers didn't find it earlier and exploit it.
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All the more reason not to have backdoors!
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@BRRABill said:
All the more reason not to have backdoors!
Ding Ding Ding ding ding!
This is what the experts are trying to get the people on capital hill to understand.
and this latest craz - We gotta get our smartest people to find a solution to this problem. But the reality is, there is no solution. Well - actually that's not true.. the solution turns us to the movies with the CIA breaking into secure places and installing taps on devices upstream of the encryption.
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@Dashrender said:
Just look at Juniper in the news last week!
Someone put a backdoor in their system - sure it took Juniper 7 years to find it, but that doesn't mean other hackers didn't find it earlier and exploit it.
Good timing on that one
And Juniper is a huge enterprise name, not like most that get caught doing this. -
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Just look at Juniper in the news last week!
Someone put a backdoor in their system - sure it took Juniper 7 years to find it, but that doesn't mean other hackers didn't find it earlier and exploit it.
Good timing on that one
And Juniper is a huge enterprise name, not like most that get caught doing this.Who had the open port earlier this year? and when they released a patch, they didn't close it, instead they just required a knock first to open it.
There are tons of these back doors discovered by security researchers who responsibly report them every month. I can only imagine all the back doors that are discovered by hackers and kept secret. Hell Stuxnet had at least 3 Zero day exploits in it. And that other security company that was hacked and their 4+ GB of data published on the internet - I don't remember how many Flash exploits, etc they were holding onto for their 'customers'.
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I can't remember who it was earlier this year.
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There are so many exploits like this kept secret by black hats and/or governments (assuming you don't consider the two one and the same.) Tons of it is kept private for personal use, tons is shared, tons is sold. The info is out there and anyone who has it and doesn't expose it isn't a good guy. Simply by receiving information that someone has been exploited and keeping that secret from them makes you (you typically being a government) one of the bad guys.
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@scottalanmiller said:
There are so many exploits like this kept secret by black hats and/or governments (assuming you don't consider the two one and the same.) Tons of it is kept private for personal use, tons is shared, tons is sold. The info is out there and anyone who has it and doesn't expose it isn't a good guy. Simply by receiving information that someone has been exploited and keeping that secret from them makes you (you typically being a government) one of the bad guys.
This, a thousand times, this!
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More than two years since our last update on this one!
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Still think FDE is a good way to go to protect against the non "deep state" hackers.
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@brrabill said in Local Encryption ... Why Not?:
Still think FDE is a good way to go to protect against the non "deep state" hackers.
FDE does nothing against hacking, though, but is effective against people who walk off with your desktops. But hackers would never even know FDE was there, it's bypassed once the machine is powered on.
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Right, I mean when the careless CEO leaves his laptop in an airport and you're just trying to protect the goods from a 14 year old kid with a Windows 10 ISO.
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@scottalanmiller said in Local Encryption ... Why Not?:
@brrabill said in Local Encryption ... Why Not?:
Still think FDE is a good way to go to protect against the non "deep state" hackers.
FDE does nothing against hacking, though, but is effective against people who walk off with your desktops. But hackers would never even know FDE was there, it's bypassed once the machine is powered on.
Unless you use LUKS with passwords or something like a Yubikey.
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@stacksofplates said in Local Encryption ... Why Not?:
@scottalanmiller said in Local Encryption ... Why Not?:
@brrabill said in Local Encryption ... Why Not?:
Still think FDE is a good way to go to protect against the non "deep state" hackers.
FDE does nothing against hacking, though, but is effective against people who walk off with your desktops. But hackers would never even know FDE was there, it's bypassed once the machine is powered on.
Unless you use LUKS with passwords or something like a Yubikey.
This is a gripe I've had with Bitlocker. Ya it's encrypted so someone can't just take a drive, but if they take the whole system it's unencrypted with the push of a button. I'm willing to bet you could get a shim between the drive and the SATA port to read data flowing. Of course this is completely out of realm of normal people, but it's still the point.
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@stacksofplates said in Local Encryption ... Why Not?:
This is a gripe I've had with Bitlocker. Ya it's encrypted so someone can't just take a drive, but if they take the whole system it's unencrypted with the push of a button.
How? I'm not familiar with Bitlocker although it is installed on my laptop.
