The reference to the names "Detective Stu Pitt" and "Detective Laughlin Foo" on the last page has me wondering about this. They both really, really sound like joke names. The similarity to the presenter's name (first slide) from the real North Dakota State Attorney's Association (NDSAA) presentation (http://www.ndsaa.org/Computer_Forensics_for_Prosecutors.pdf) also seems suspicious.
It has the look that somebody took the real NDSAA presentation, tweaked it up, and released it as a hoax.
I dug a little further. Not only is there "Detective Stu Pitt", there's also "Laughlin Foo" for the next day's presentation, and the link at the bottom is for the North Dakota State Attorney's Association, though the only state mentioned (and whose seal is used) is Oregon. This is phony.
A few gems in here besides the TrueCrypt statement, mainly that Apple iCloud and Dropbox are named, and the legal framework is touched upon.
All cloud stored content are automatically hash-scanned
and image-analyzed by their service providers and
infringing content reported to NCMEC (p16)
Mobile content are automatically scanned when they are
synced with cloud storage like Apple iCloud or Dropbox.
Mobile devices that are not cloud-synced can be accessed
by their respective vendors (p16)
If I am reading this correctly, when you upload something to Apple iCloud or Dropbox, there is a background process which generates a hash of your content, then compares that hash with infringing content? What defense do companies have? What about proof that these claims are true (sources, etc)? Can anyone just leak a document that claims XYZ tech company spies on its users and everyone takes this as fact?
Vendors are legally and commercially prevented from
acknowledging their backdoors. Defense will not be
able to prove their existence (p16)
Great, blanket denial either way! I hope this is a hoax!
I think they're speaking about system dumps at the manufacturer level.
For example, I'm fairly confident that the data on Motorola devices can be read completely using USB from bootloader mode without any data modification (using tools like RSD Lite or sbf_flash). By itself that wouldn't get past OS-level encryption, though. That bootloader is entirely Motorola's with functionality and communication protocols dating back to before the pre-Android razr flip phones (from what I could tell back when I was doing battle with the XT720).
On the other hand, passphrases for boot security on mobile devices are often extremely weak (pin or what-have-you) and easy to brute force (assuming there is a backdoor to access the TPM contents or whatever it's called on ARM/OMAP/etc if it uses that sort of thing)
With regards to FileVault for Mac, some friends who used to work as Geniuses at the Apple Store have mentioned having to request special software from corporate that would fix or recover FileVault in some way - they weren't clear and said it was not something they were supposed to talk about. Obviously I'd take the info with a grain of salt, but based on the news lately...
I had an conversation regarding FileVault with the geniuses recently too.
> Oh we see [your MacBook] has a password, would you be able to write it down here?
Haha, nope!
> Any, uh, reason not to?
Nope.
From a conversation later on, apparently not many people opt not to give up their keys. I'm not sure why they pushed me to give it up either, the geniuses know full well that they can just boot their diagnostics disk without the password anyway.
Bear in mind that the default setup for Apple's FileVault also sends a copy of the encryption key to Apple too (associated with your AppleID), where presumably there is access granted to the US government also (willing or unwilling).
> Bear in mind that the default setup for Apple's FileVault also sends a copy of the encryption key to Apple too (associated with your AppleID), where presumably there is access granted to the US government also (willing or unwilling).
Are we all just going to take this seriously? It's pretty obviously a fake. Just look at the names at the end. Detective Laughlin Foo? Stu Pitt? Neither of which, incidentally, return anything in google aside from this presentation. There's also a clear divergence in style on the backdoor slides, and it reads like a parody.
But the most obvious problem: if the NSA or whoever had a backdoor to truecrypt and Android and iOS, they would not send that information to a local DA office to be leaked.
Please don't set aside critical thinking just because something confirms your biases.
No, but they operate at a scale beyond our comprehension, and use reasoning beyond our comprehension (or mine, anyway!), so it's not too clever to imagine that we can anticipate their limits...
• “Fruit of the poisonous tree” can be circumvented
• The use of backdoors cannot be detected or proven
• Vendors are legally and commercially prevented from
acknowledging their backdoors. Defense will not be
able to prove their existence
• The files can be described as “forensically obtained”
...but how is the prosecution able to prove the files exist on someone's device if they don't have to disclose how they determined that the files were present? If all they have to do is assert that the files exist and were "forensically obtained" then why bother with the backdoor in the first place?
The title page credits the document to a presentation by a detective in Oregon. Have any journalists tried to verify the source and accuracy of this document? It's unclear from the article submission why it was submitted or how the submitter found it.
Edit: I just read the current top comment listing the names of the supposed presenters.
Could it happen in some off-the-beaten-path courtroom that isn't being watched as closely, and whose defendants are less likely to know that? The title page of the document shows a county in Oregon, and the link at the end to the previous year's presentation points to North Dakota.
If you use the link to the last year's presentation on the last page, and download it, you can see last year's presentation was made by "micah smith" (who apparently has become "michael smith" this year).
The entire presentation is clearly a copy of the previous year presentation, with some words changed by some moron with an agenda whose understanding of criminal procedure came from watching too many law and order episodes.
So there's a few possible ways to interpret this..
* There is an actual hereto-unknown flaw in TrueCrypt's algorithms or implementations of algorithms that can be exploited.
* They are referring to the only known attack, wherein keys can be recovered from RAM if the volume isn't unmounted correctly.
* This is FUD designed to push people away from less-breakable encryption and onto software which actually /does/ have backdoors.
* This is a hoax (pay special attention to the detective's names on the slide)
"Reflections on trusting trust" [1] may be necessary here. When you install Truecrypt, do you download a packaged binary app? Or do you compile it from source? Do you trust your compiler?
Until you know what the backdoor actually _is_, please don't stop just because you audited the source code.
Worth mentioning that truecrypt volumes can be hidden inside playable video files. Yes, it's security through obscurity, but hey, it makes me feel a little safer.
Not completely. How many video files does he have? Where is it stored?
I'm curious now though, do Truecrypt volumes have a magic number, in which case it's still easy to find, or are they fully crypographically random in appearance, making this a known-needle in a large haystack problem?
Truecrypt claims an encrypted volume is indistinguishable from random data. I do not know if this is the case though. Obviously don't give it the file a stupid name or extension like "encryptedfiles.tc" or leave it open in your file history, etc.
It's also pretty suspicious if someone has a file of megabytes of random data.
There is more regarding zSearch: "... computer search tool called osTriage/zSEARCH. The search tool allows investigators to find child pornography without damaging the forensic integrity of a computer." http://attorneygeneral.utah.gov/PR_122011.html
This really doesn't sound legit. I suspect they might be thinking of backdooring the truecrypt client, which, really wouldn't make it much of a feat.
The container format itself is really just a giant mathematical mess -- there really isn't anything to backdoor there.
And then the client doesn't exactly dial-out to anything when you mount an encrypted volume. Therefore I would suggest that this is probably a matter of using alternative means of access to the machine in order to patch the client itself.
That wouldn't exactly be worthy of the attention of the NSA, given that truecrypt is open-source.
> The container format itself is really just a giant mathematical mess -- there really isn't anything to backdoor there.
The container itself can actually be 'backdoored' by a malicious client by eg saving a duplicate of the master key, or generating a master key using a deliberately weak RNG.
The current downvotes on your comment are why I didn't say "This really doesn't sound legit." instead of what I did (that and there is a genuine possibility for the commenter to have a real reason for using a throwaway).
Nope, this is what Ginsburg would call an instruction manual for how to defeat the 4th amendment.
The use of backdoors cannot be detected or proven
Vendors are legally and commercially prevented from acknowledging their backdoors. Defense will not be able to prove their existence
I saw that, but I still don't see how that works in a trial. Said evidence will need to be introduced in court. When the witness tries to be cute by giving a vague answer, can't the defense just ask the witness to explain further?
I'll quote it here anyway, for the benefit of other readers -
What’s A Backdoor?
• A method to bypass data encryption or security
• Does not require the password or passphrase to be known
• Saves time, cost and effort to access encrypted or secured data
• Allows data to be accessed, copied and even modified without tipping off the owner
• Currently available for major encryption software – Microsoft Bitlocker, FileVault, BestCrypt, TrueCrypt, etc
• Currently implemented by major cloud storage provider to comply with NCMEC requirements
It has the look that somebody took the real NDSAA presentation, tweaked it up, and released it as a hoax.
Edit:
Here's a site that seems to be hosting the same PDF as part of an article dated 1 April 2013: http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=770