Security by encrypting a hard drive without additional PIN when using Windows Truecrpyt?

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Does encrypting a hard drive containing sensitive information in a PC via Windows Truecrpyt without entering an additional Truecrpyt PIN during boot (the default behavior) protect the data on a hard drive in case of theft?

I assume theft of the whole system and that the thief does not know any valid logins on that Windows machine.

(I am mainly asking because of the General Data Protection Regulation coming up in the EU, though the answer is independent of that.)

Andreas Reiff

Posted 2018-03-17T16:36:07.287

Reputation: 895

Answers

3

Does encrypting a hard drive using Windows Truecrypt protect the data?

Let's simplify your question to the above.

The answer is no.

Truecrypt is no longer maintained, and at least two serious flaws have been found.

Windows users who rely on TrueCrypt to encrypt their hard drives have a security problem: a researcher has discovered two serious flaws in the program.

TrueCrypt may have been abandoned by its original developers, but it remains one of the few encryption options for Windows. That keeps researchers interested in finding holes in the program and its spin-offs.

James Forshaw, a member of Google's Project Zero team that regularly finds vulnerabilities in widely used software, has recently discovered two vulnerabilities in the driver that TrueCrypt installs on Windows systems.

The flaws, which were apparently missed in an earlier independent audit of the TrueCrypt source code, could allow attackers to obtain elevated privileges on a system if they have access to a limited user account.

The original authors of TrueCrypt, who have remained anonymous, abruptly shut down the project in May 2014 warning that "it may contain unfixed security issues" and advised users to switch to BitLocker, Microsoft's full-disk encryption feature that's available in certain versions of Windows.

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Since TrueCrypt is no longer actively maintained, the bugs won't be fixed directly in the program's code. However, they have been fixed in VeraCrypt, an open-source program based on the TrueCrypt code that aims to continue and improve the original project.

VeraCrypt 1.15 that was released Saturday, contains patches for the two vulnerabilities, identified as CVE-2015-7358 and CVE-2015-7359, as well as for other bugs. The program's developer only flagged the CVE-2015-7358 flaw as critical and said that it can be exploited by "abusing drive letter handling."

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Users who still use TrueCrypt should switch to VeraCrypt as soon as possible. In addition to patches for these two flaws, the program also has other security improvements over its predecessor.

Source Newly found TrueCrypt flaw allows full system compromise | CSO Online

DavidPostill

Posted 2018-03-17T16:36:07.287

Reputation: 118 938