VeraCrypt

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
VeraCrypt
Developer(s)IDRIX (based in Paris, France)[1]
Initial releaseJune 22, 2013; 10 years ago (2013-06-22)
Stable release1.26.7 (October 31, 2023; 5 months ago (2023-10-31)[2]) [±]
Repository
Written inC, C++, Assembly
Operating system
TrueCrypt License 3.0[4]
Websitewww.veracrypt.fr/en/Home.html

VeraCrypt is a

storage device with pre-boot authentication.[7]

VeraCrypt is a

CPUs
.

Encryption scheme

VeraCrypt employs AES, Serpent, Twofish, Camellia, and Kuznyechik as ciphers. Version 1.19 stopped using the Magma cipher in response to a security audit.[9] For additional security, ten different combinations of cascaded algorithms are available:[10]

  • AES–Twofish
  • AES–Twofish–Serpent
  • Camellia–Kuznyechik
  • Camellia–Serpent
  • Kuznyechik–AES
  • Kuznyechik–Serpent–Camellia
  • Kuznyechik–Twofish
  • Serpent–AES
  • Serpent–Twofish–AES
  • Twofish–Serpent

The

RIPEMD-160 but it has since been removed in version 1.26.[12]

VeraCrypt's

XTS.[13] It generates the header key and the secondary header key (XTS mode) using PBKDF2 with a 512-bit salt. By default they go through 200,000 to 500,000 iterations, depending on the underlying hash function used and whether it is system or non-system encryption.[14] The user can customize it to start as low as 2,048 and 16,000 respectively.[14]

Security improvements

See also: TrueCrypt § Security audits

VeraCrypt audit

QuarksLab conducted an audit of version 1.18 on behalf of the Open Source Technology Improvement Fund (OSTIF), which took 32 man-days. The auditor published the results on 17 October 2016.[15][25][26] On the same day, IDRIX released version 1.19, which resolved major vulnerabilities identified in the audit.[27]

Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT) conducted another audit in 2020, following a request by Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), and published the results in October 2020.[28][29]

Security precautions

There are several kinds of attacks to which all software-based disk encryption is vulnerable. As with TrueCrypt, the VeraCrypt documentation instructs users to follow various security precautions to mitigate these attacks,[30][31] several of which are detailed below.

Encryption keys stored in memory

Main article: Cold boot attack
x64 editions of Windows, with a CPU overhead of less than 10%, and the option of erasing all encryption keys from memory when a new device is connected.[15]

Tampered hardware

Main article: Evil maid attack

VeraCrypt documentation states that VeraCrypt is unable to secure data on a computer if an attacker physically accessed it and VeraCrypt is then used on the compromised computer by the user again. This does not affect the common case of a stolen, lost, or confiscated computer.

hardware or software, allowing the attacker to capture unencrypted data (including encryption keys and passwords) or to decrypt encrypted data using captured passwords or encryption keys. Therefore, physical security is a basic premise of a secure system.[34]

Some kinds of malware are designed to log keystrokes, including typed passwords, that may then be sent to the attacker over the Internet or saved to an unencrypted local drive from which the attacker might be able to read it later, when they gain physical access to the computer.[35]

Trusted Platform Module

VeraCrypt does not take advantage of Trusted Platform Module (TPM). VeraCrypt FAQ repeats the negative opinion of the original TrueCrypt developers verbatim.

keystroke logger, by resetting TPM, or by capturing memory contents and retrieving TPM-issued keys. The condemning text goes so far as to claim that TPM is entirely redundant.[37]

It is true that after achieving either unrestricted physical access or administrative privileges, it is only a matter of time before other security measures in place are bypassed.[38][39] However, stopping an attacker in possession of administrative privileges has never been one of the goals of TPM. (See Trusted Platform Module § Uses for details.) TPM might, however, reduce the success rate of the cold boot attack described above.[40][41][42][43][44] TPM is also known to be susceptible to SPI attacks.[45]

Plausible deniability

As with its predecessor TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt supports plausible deniability[46] by allowing a single "hidden volume" to be created within another volume.[47] The Windows versions of VeraCrypt can create and run a hidden encrypted operating system whose existence may be denied.[48] The VeraCrypt documentation lists ways in which the hidden volume deniability features may be compromised (e.g., by third-party software which may leak information through temporary files or via thumbnails) and possible ways to avoid this.[30]

Performance

VeraCrypt supports

AES-NI instruction set, VeraCrypt supports hardware-accelerated AES to further improve performance.[49]: 64  On 64-bit CPUs VeraCrypt uses optimized assembly implementation of Twofish, Serpent, and Camellia.[15]

License and source model

VeraCrypt was forked from the since-discontinued TrueCrypt project in 2013,[8] and originally contained mostly TrueCrypt code released under the TrueCrypt License 3.0. In the years since, more and more of VeraCrypt's code has been rewritten and released under the permissive Apache License 2.0.

The TrueCrypt license is generally considered to be

free and open source
. The Apache license is universally considered to be free and open source. The mixed VeraCrypt license is widely but not universally considered to be free and open source.

On 28 May 2014 TrueCrypt ceased development under unusual circumstances,[50][51][52] and there exists no way to contact the former developers.

VeraCrypt is considered to be free and open source by:

VeraCrypt is considered to not be free and open source by:

  • Debian[62]
  • Some members of the Open Source Initiative, including the director,[63] expressed concern about an older version of the TrueCrypt license, but the OSI itself has not published a determination regarding either TrueCrypt or VeraCrypt.
  • The Free Software Foundation has determined the TrueCrypt license to be non-free.[64] The FSF has not published a determination regarding the VeraCrypt license.

Most of these are due to Veracrypt and Truecrypt not having supported or endorsed licenses. For example, the FSF considers all licenses not under the GNU license series that interfere with the GNU license to be non-free.[65] Debian considers all software that does not meet the guidelines of its DFSG to be non-free.

Legal cases

In US v. Burns, the defendant had three hard drives, the first being a system partition which was later found to contain caches of deleted child pornography and manuals for how to use VeraCrypt, with the second being encrypted, and the third having miscellaneous music files. Even though the defendant admitted to having child pornography on his second hard drive, he refused to give the password to the authorities. Despite searching for clues of previously used passwords on the first drive, and inquiries to the FBI about any weaknesses to the VeraCrypt software that could be used to access the drive partition, and brute-forcing the partition with the alphanumeric character set as potential passwords, the partition could not be accessed. Due to the defendant confessing to having child pornography on the encrypted drive, the prosecution applied to force the defendant to give away the password under the foregone conclusion doctrine in the All Writs Act.[66]

In a search of a Californian defendant's apartment for accessing child pornography, a VeraCrypt drive that was over 900 Gigabytes was found as an external hard drive. The FBI was called to assist local law enforcement, but the FBI claimed to not have found a weakness in the VeraCrypt software. The FBI also denied having a backdoor within the VeraCrypt software. It was later found that another suspect had educated the defendant into using encryption to hide his photos and videos of child pornography. Because the defendant had admitted to having child pornography on the drive as a backup anyways and chat logs relating to the other suspect educating the defendant on how to use VeraCrypt, the foregone conclusion doctrine was used again.[67]

See also

References

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  2. ^ "Release Notes". July 2, 2023. Retrieved July 11, 2023.
  3. ^ "VeraCrypt - Free Open source disk encryption with strong security for the Paranoid". Veracrypt. Retrieved 2022-05-07.
  4. ^ "root/License.txt". VeraCrypt. TrueCrypt Foundation. 17 Oct 2016. Retrieved 23 Jul 2018.
  5. ^ "VeraCrypt Official Site"
  6. ^ "VeraCrypt Volume". VeraCrypt Official Website. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
  7. ^ "Operating Systems Supported for System Encryption". VeraCrypt Official Website. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
  8. ^ a b Rubens, Paul (October 13, 2014). "VeraCrypt a Worthy TrueCrypt Alternative". eSecurity Planet. Quinstreet Enterprise. Archived from the original on December 3, 2018. Retrieved February 16, 2015.
  9. ^ Pauli, Darren (October 18, 2016). "Audit sees VeraCrypt kill critical password recovery, cipher flaws". The Register. Archived from the original on November 15, 2018.
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  14. ^ a b c d "Header Key Derivation, Salt, and Iteration Count". VeraCrypt Documentation. IDRIX. Retrieved 2019-02-19.
  15. ^ a b c d e f g h i "VeraCrypt Release Notes"
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  67. ^ In the Matter of the Search of a Residence in Aptos, California 95003, 2018-03-20, retrieved 2023-08-22

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to VeraCrypt.
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