{"id":172,"date":"2010-06-06T10:04:17","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T10:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timbrison.wordpress.com\/?p=172"},"modified":"2014-02-01T09:54:48","modified_gmt":"2014-02-01T09:54:48","slug":"usb-encryption-hideously-broken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/2010\/06\/usb-encryption-hideously-broken\/","title":{"rendered":"USB Encryption Hideously Broken"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"screenshot.169\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hardware encrypted USB sticks have been shown to be easily circumvented, I read recently<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, how safe is your data? Do you even care?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

I find no surprise these days, in what sort of data people routinely carry around – on their person. While this may not seem particularly un-safe, it may be wise toi reflect on this: laptops are almost always stolen when they get moved<\/em><\/strong>. This is because people are not perfect – they forget and leave things unattended – all the time.<\/p>\n

You might think your USB key is extra safe, because it is ‘hardware’ encrypted, which we all know <\/strong><\/em>is the best – but is it?<\/p>\n

This article clearly demonstrates that security isn’t something you can buy – it is a state of mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All sorts of vendors make huge claims for the security of their products, but when it comes to encrypting data, these claims can be very <\/strong><\/em>difficult to verify. Much worse, these devices were given the ‘all clear’ by certifying them as FIPS 140-2 compliant, which is a NIST security standard – any non security expert, is going to read this as some kind of guarantee.<\/p>\n

So, what can you do?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bruce Schneier (industry expert) wrote an essay on how to define the good from the bad, but as you can see<\/a>, it’s not for the faint hearted!<\/p>\n

As for me, I put Mr. Schneider’s essay to the test and reviewed many of the available encryption packages. To this day I have yet to find a better solution than Truecrypt <\/a>– though I do not endorse any products – Truecrypt does appear to check all the boxes. (Within the corporate enterprise though, I would probably choose SafeBoot – Bitlocker is ok, but Safeboot is easier to manage in the enterprise.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hardware encrypted USB sticks have been shown to be easily circumvented, I read recently. So, how safe is your data? Do you even care?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[85,86],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-encryption","category-security","tag-encryption","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":899,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions\/899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}