Easy to crack an encrypted HDD - within 10 seconds ???

Question

I was discussing hard drive encryption with a friend at school, and he told me no matter how strong a password or algorithm one uses to encrypt one's hard drive, the US government has software that can crack it within 10 seconds, and assured me he'd used such software while serving in the Army
Does anybody know anything about this?
Last edited by deltaecho (2008-09-07 20:56:48)

Answer 1

Dusty wrote:I've never used it, but from what I've heard, I'd suggest TrueCrypt. Then he has to prove not only that he can decrypt the filesystem, but also that the filesystem exists.
I've used TrueCrypt for a couple years and followed its development. It's a good program, possibly the best.
skottish wrote:The US government has the keys to all commercially available encryption algorithms in the US (at least). That's why it's so easy.
Not necessarily "all commercial", but I wouldn't trust the companies farther than I can throw their CEOs. That the US Gov't has backdoor's into a lot -- no question about it. And it's not just domestic.
tonyisnt wrote:
I don't know about this.  Would that work?  Because isn't the Windows pagefile located on the hard drive, meaning that drive would have to be readable in the first place?  RAM is obviously a different story.
I'm no expert on any of this, of course, it just doesn't sound like that method would work.
It's generally assumed that a major government agency/operation can get access to any machine they desire. Whether it be via remote exploit or simply breaking down the door. Scanning swapfiles is common, as is scanning an active machine's RAM space -- or at least writing it to disk and then analyzing it.