57
votes
Accepted
Is LUKS still an effective option for consumer FDE considering Elcomsoft can break it?
No, Elcomsoft cannot break LUKS or Veracrypt. What they do is to guess the password. Any password-based encryption mechanism can be broken by guessing the password: this is not a flaw in the ...
21
votes
Is LUKS still an effective option for consumer FDE considering Elcomsoft can break it?
While LUKS offers strong protection against brute force attacks by using thousands of iterations of a hash function during key derivation, we have significant advances in password recovery attacks ...
- 16.9k
18
votes
Accepted
Should I trust that the Android factory reset actually erases my data?
All android 7+ devices are enrolled with File Based Encryption (FBE) that encrypts /data partition from first boot. FBE keys are bound to TEE and user screen lock authentication. On factory reset, TEE ...
- 6,931
12
votes
Accepted
Isn't "BIOS reset password" a security flaw?
It's a security feature for sure; it's good for data recovery if password is lost. Dell has implemented further security controls to guard against misuse:
When contacting Dell Technical Support, you ...
- 2,012
10
votes
Isn't "BIOS reset password" a security flaw?
I believe it's just a feature that they're giving to their users. The link also says the below:
For HDD Passwords: Share the Service Tag and the hard drive serial number that is mentioned at the top ...
- 4,444
4
votes
Accepted
Do external harddrives keep track of the computers they're plugged in to?
In my experience I have never seen any storage devices that does this by themself.
As others in the comments has mentioned: Some information like hours powered on, the number of timed powered on and ...
- 301
4
votes
Isn't "BIOS reset password" a security flaw?
I believe you are referring to ATA password, in which case mistake here is to consider this a security feature.
You will find lots of tools to bypass such password (for instance, here's a list).
Not ...
- 609
3
votes
Accepted
Encrypting Drive before Online Proctor Exam
Can your school provide you with a “checkout laptop”, one that may already have the proctoring spyware pre-installed? Check with your advisor; then check with the university. The office of the provost ...
- 34.6k
3
votes
Is LUKS still an effective option for consumer FDE considering Elcomsoft can break it?
Other answers have thoroughly addressed the nature of Elcomsoft's capabilities and explained that there is no known cryptographic vulnerability in LUKS itself. To answer the core question "Is ...
- 131
3
votes
Do external harddrives keep track of the computers they're plugged in to?
I did not yet come across a device which does that (in an easy to recognize way*) but in theory they could. And in practice they sometimes do.
In the end a harddrive is a cpu (often an ARM processor) +...
- 31
3
votes
Accepted
Best practice to secure hard-drive in case of theft or loss or unauthorized access?
The best solution for protection of the contents of a fixed storage medium is to use a password-based full-disk encryption system with a strong password. Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise come with ...
- 171
3
votes
Accepted
Password protect an internal hard drive in a shared Windows PC where all users are administrators
There's a concept in threat modelling called spheres of control. A sphere of control is effectively the things in a system that a particular actor has control over. Actors are usually people with ...
- 136k
2
votes
Password protect an internal hard drive in a shared Windows PC where all users are administrators
Yes, you can encrypt the files you want protected. This is often implemented as a transparent layer in the OS, so Applications will work normally without having to decrypt the files first. There's ...
- 21.6k
2
votes
How to best prevent data recovery on a disk drive without physically destroying it?
Yes variants of this question constantly recur, nevertheless I'll try to do a quick and dirty answer before this gets closed.
A single pass over write of the raw drive with anything, zeros, random, ...
- 8,193
1
vote
Reliably destroy all information on magnetic disk through digital medium
If you want to be 100% sure that nothing can be read, remove the hard drive and replace it with a brand new one. If you take into account the risk, and payment for your time, this is likely also the ...
- 2,583
1
vote
Reliably destroy all information on magnetic disk through digital medium
To an extent, you have to choose which option is best for you given your individual situation such as how important it is that the information does not fall into someone else's hands and whether you ...
- 1,667
1
vote
How to prevent the recovery of deleted files without a full format of external HDD?
Open the Finder menu Select "Secure Empty Trash"?
Other methods -
Encrypt the drive.
Write random data to fill the entire empty space, which will overwrite the deleted files, after they are ...
- 1,229
1
vote
Encrypting Drive before Online Proctor Exam
You could encrypt the drive with something like BitLocker (with automatic unlocking disabled) or VeraCrypt. That way they wouldn't be able to access the contents without your encryption key (although ...
- 14.6k
1
vote
Google Chrome folder protection during HDD forensics
No, it is all unencrypted. You can copy the folder located at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data (or similar folder on other OS) and place it in the same location on another user/computer to have ...
- 301
1
vote
Password protect an internal hard drive in a shared Windows PC where all users are administrators
Since the students will have administrative rights on the machine no easy solution would be advisable since it would be possible for the students to install keyloggers, read data from the drive etc. ...
1
vote
Accepted
Erasing hard drives (HDD & SSD) for donation
[SSD]: It's easier to perform a secure erase, using the companies software. Seagate SeaTools, Western Digital SSD Dashboard, Samsung Magician, Intel SSD Toolbox are the most common. In all of these ...
1
vote
Cloning external harddrive encrypted by bitlocker using dd
DD is a bit for bit copy, barring disk malfunctions. The copy should be fine and open with the same key. I've been doing this for years with LUKs encrypted disks with no issues.
Make sure neither ...
- 8,193
1
vote
Can I Hook Up A Infected Drive To Another Computer?
would I be able to copy the files over to my laptop
If you are sure the disk is infected with virus, better scan the files and copy file only when it comes clean. Malware hiding frameworks and other ...
- 573
1
vote
Breaking SAM windows password file offline
Yes, you can use the cachedump (to dump cached credentials) and pwdump (to dump password hashes out of the SAM file) in combination with the system hive. You should have access to both files on the ...
- 5,969
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible