Re: [Fed-Talk] Filevault, Disk Encrypted Images, cracked with a utility
Re: [Fed-Talk] Filevault, Disk Encrypted Images, cracked with a utility
- Subject: Re: [Fed-Talk] Filevault, Disk Encrypted Images, cracked with a utility
- From: Richard Murphy <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 10:19:02 -0700
On Apr 27, 2007, at 9:26 AM, Michael Pike wrote:
http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/04/27/maclockpick/index.php?
lsrc=mwrss
There is the story... not to say "I told you so", but everyone who
calls me paranoid once again sees that paranoid was not wrong in this
instance.
The fact Apple's disk images and Filevault rely on the Apple Keychain
for a encryption key wrapper makes it very insecure.
That is exactly why I buy all of my encryption stuff from NON-US
companies that are not under the same pressures that some of these
obvious ones are.
Un-f'in-believable.
From the web site of MacLockPick:
MacLockPick takes advantage of the fact that the default state of
the Apple Keychain is open, even if the system has been put to
sleep.It also makes use of the openly readable settings files used
to keep track of your suspect's contacts, activities and history.
These data sources even include items that your suspect may have
previously deleted or has migrated from previous Mac OS X computers.
They don't break the encryption of the keychain, they make use of the
fact that most users don't set their keychains to lock on sleep.
You can do that using Keychain Access in the Edit:Change Settings for
Keychain <foo> menu. Once you do that though you'll need to provide
your keychain password for any keychains accessed once as your system
comes out of sleep. For most of our customers that was determined to
be an unacceptable default user experience.
The main term in that last sentence is "default". We're continually
balancing the user experience with security. There is a lot of
resistance to popping up unlock dialogs and notification dialogs
because it breaks the user's context to provide a button click or a
password. We made Keychains so that knowlegeable users who want to
can strengthen the security of their password storage at the expense
of a few more dialogs.
Filevault passwords aren't kept in the keychain. (I'm curious about
the statement that the "System" contains the user password, if so I
might have to go beat some poor engineering group about the heads.)
Encrypted Disk image passwords can be, but for some stuff you
probably always want to rely on a password that only exists "in your
head". For most people though the biggest weakness in any password-
based encryption they do is a poorly chosen password.
People from Apple responded... yes they did, but nobody said "There is
no backdoor."
My group wrote the Keychain Subsystem and maintains the encryption
algorithms used by the system.
There is no backdoor.
- murf
Richard Murphy
Manager, Apple Data Security Group,
Core OS, Apple Computer, Inc.
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