HDD Decrypting Cannot be Enforced by U.S. Prosecutors

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]curtis_87[/nom]Am I the only one that thinks bootcd==>create a new admin account in the SAMS database then strip the old user account of password, and you are in as the old user with no password. 10 min job...on windows..does it even matter if the drive is encrypted?[/citation]

If the drive is encrypted then you can't do anything with it at all unless you manage to crack the codes somehow or have the codes. An encrypted drive can mean that everything is encrypted, including the OS and the OS's bootloader. What happens is either a secure bootloader that allows you to decrypt the drive then boots into the bootloader, then into Windows or whatever you have on the drive.

You can even just put the decrypting bootloader onto a different media, making the hard drive useless without the media that the boot loader is stored on. There are even more possibilities. You can only crack this stuff if someone is stupid with their codes or uses a more easily broken encryption algorithm such as DES instead of AES, Serpent, etc.

There are even more things that you can do. There are these awesome little things called key files. They are basically entire files that are used as codes or to supplement codes. Some encryption supports key files of up to 16MB or higher, that's like a 134217728 bit code! Honestly, the sky's the limit for encryption and local data protection. We only have data and privacy problems when we are online where other groups can get to our data.

There are even more things to learn about encryption, but I have no intention of typing a massive report on it.

 

[curtis_87]

simplec1 02/29/2012 8:42 PM and blazorthon 03/01/2012 6:47 AM ya both get a +1 from me.
Thanks, knew about TPM's in passing but you given me extra food for thought, got some reading to do havent been keeping as up to date as I should In essence there is more than one way to skin a cat...

Seriously though guys an gals, was that question sooooo offensive that it deserved a thumbs down? If I had said sumit like "drive encrption is for foools, I pitty the fool dat encypts his drive"...oh well.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]fcbyrruukmny[/nom]But as we are seeing in many video's on the internet, those rights a broken all the time by government and police. Just saying..[/citation]

Yes, but those are exceptions, not generally correct for most of the police force. Now the government will do a lot, but not directly to us unless we are suspected of something. I've known several officers and I've seen several arrests, never seen police brutality myself. Not that I deny it's happening, but I don't think it is too common compared to proper actions done by the police.

The government is a little too general to accuse of something. Choose individual parts of it and those who work for it. For example, the FBI arrested Kim Dotcom despite him being outside of US jurisdiction and they seized his property and property of his company, again, despite this all being in foreign countries that are outside of our jurisdiction.

If he was really guilty of something then the local authorities should have handled it. They should have left megaupload open for another few days or a week so everyone with legitimate files on it didn't get screwed over by it being shut down without warning, but oh well.

We can say that the NSA is intentionally lying about groups whom opposed the government (such as hacker groups). They are the ones telling us that stuff like our power grid and the very Internet itself are being threatened by the majority of Anonymous even though these have been shown to be false projects that are not going to be done. Besides that, the supposed hack method for taking down the Internet looked like it was made up by an idiot. It assumed that we only have 13 locations with root DNS servers (there are actually way over a hundred such locations today) and that the attack was even possible... It wasn't possible, at least not in the method described.

The governent and such in these two examples didn't directly attack us, but they did hurt us in roundabout ways. For megaupload, it takes away a vast resource of fast, freely available storage. For the NSA, it incites panic among those less tech savvy.