Windows 8.1 will automatically encrypt the storage on modern Windows PCs. This will help protect your files in case someone steals your laptop and tries to get at them, but it has important ramifications for data recovery.
Previously, “BitLocker” was available on Professional and Enterprise editions of Windows, while “Device Encryption” was available on Windows RT and Windows Phone. Device encryption is included with all editions of Windows 8.1 — and it’s on by default.
Forenseinc On Encrypted Device Windows 10When Your Hard Drive Will Be Encrypted
Windows 8.1 includes “Pervasive Device Encryption.” This works a bit differently from the standard BitLocker feature that has been included in Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions of Windows for the past few versions.
Before Windows 8.1 automatically enables Device Encryption, the following must be true:
If you have an older Windows computer that you’ve upgraded to Windows 8.1, it may not support Device Encryption. If you log in with a local user account, Device Encryption won’t be enabled. If you upgrade your Windows 8 device to Windows 8.1, you’ll need to enable device encryption, as it’s off by default when upgrading.
Recovering An Encrypted Hard Drive
Device encryption means that a thief can’t just pick up your laptop, insert a Linux live CD or Windows installer disc, and boot the alternate operating system to view your files without knowing your Windows password. It means that no one can just pull the hard drive from your device, connect the hard drive to another computer, and view the files.
Fallout 4 achievements with mods ps4. Achievements are medals or rewards given for accomplishing a specific task or tasks. Depending on your gaming platform of choice, along with the achievement itself, you will receive either Gamer Score (Xbox One), or a Bronze, Silver, or Gold Trophy (Playstation 4). A save file with mods enabled. Dec 18, 2017 About this mod. Enables achievements in Fallout 4 when using mods. This is designed to be version independent. No F4SE needed. Not NMM compatible. Aug 31, 2017 Uses F4SE to re-enable achievements while mods are active. It should work with future updates as long as F4SE is updated for your game version, assuming the signature doesn't break. Plugin Path: DataF4SEPluginsachievements.dll.
We’ve previously explained that your Windows password doesn’t actually secure your files. With Windows 8.1, average Windows users will finally be protected with encryption by default.
RELATED:How to Enable Two-Step Authentication For Increased Security on Windows 8 and the Web
However, there’s a problem — if you forget your password and are unable to log in, you’d also be unable to recover your files. This is likely why encryption is only enabled when a user logs in with a Microsoft account (or connects to a domain). Microsoft holds a recovery key, so you can gain access to your files by going through a recovery process. As long as you’re able to authenticate using your Microsoft account credentials — for example, by receiving an SMS message on the cell phone number connected to your Microsoft account — you’ll be able to recover your encrypted data.
With Windows 8.1, it’s more important than ever to configure your Microsoft account’s security settings and recovery methods so you’ll be able to recover your files if you ever get locked out of your Microsoft account.
RELATED:How to Secure Sensitive Files on Your PC with VeraCrypt
Microsoft does hold the recovery key and would be capable of providing it to law enforcement if it was requested, which is certainly a legitimate concern in the age of PRISM. However, this encryption still provides protection from thieves picking up your hard drive and digging through your personal or business files. If you’re worried about a government or a determined thief who’s capable of gaining access to your Microsoft account, you’ll want to encrypt your hard drive with software that doesn’t upload a copy of your recovery key to the Internet, such as TrueCrypt.
How to Disable Device Encryption
There should be no real reason to disable device encryption. If nothing else, it’s a useful feature that will hopefully protect sensitive data in the real world where people — and even businesses — don’t enable encryption on their own.
As encryption is only enabled on devices with the appropriate hardware and will be enabled by default, Microsoft has hopefully ensured that users won’t see noticeable slow-downs in performance. Encryption adds some overhead, but the overhead can hopefully be handled by dedicated hardware.
If you’d like to enable a different encryption solution or just disable encryption entirely, you can control this yourself. To do so, open the PC settings app — swipe in from the right edge of the screen or press Windows Key + C, click the Settings icon, and select Change PC settings.
Navigate to PC and devices -> PC info. At the bottom of the PC info pane, you’ll see a Device Encryption section. Select Turn Off if you want to disable device encryption, or select Turn On if you want to enable it — users upgrading from Windows 8 will have to enable it manually in this way.
Note that Device Encryption can’t be disabled on Windows RT devices, such as Microsoft’s Surface RT and Surface 2.
If you don’t see the Device Encryption section in this window, you’re likely using an older device that doesn’t meet the requirements and thus doesn’t support Device Encryption. For example, our Windows 8.1 virtual machine doesn’t offer Device Encryption configuration options.
This is the new normal for Windows PCs, tablets, and devices in general. Where files on typical PCs were once ripe for easy access by thieves, Windows PCs are now encrypted by default and recovery keys are sent to Microsoft’s servers for safe keeping.
This last part may be a bit creepy, but it’s easy to imagine average users forgetting their passwords — they’d be very upset if they lost all their files because they had to reset their passwords. It’s also an improvement over Windows PCs being completely unprotected by default.
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Intune provides a centralized location to identify the encryption status of your Windows 10 devices, and helps you access important information for BitLocker from your devices, as found in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD).
Encryption report
You can use the Encryption report to view details about the Encryption status of your Windows 10 devices.
To find the report, Sign in to the Intune and go to Device Configuration, and then under Monitor, select Encryption report.
Prerequisites:
To appear in the Encryption report, a device must run Windows version 1607 or later.
Report details
The report displays the Device name for your Windows 10 devices and high-level details about each, including:
Device encryption status
When you select a device, Intune displays the Device encryption status pane.
This pane provides the following details:
BitLocker recovery keys
Intune provides access the Azure AD blade for BitLocker so you can view BitLocker Key IDs and recovery keys for your Windows 10 devices, from within the Intune portal. To be accessible, the device must have its keys escrowed to Azure AD.
When keys are available in Azure AD, the following information is available:
When keys aren't in Azure AD, Intune will display No BitLocker key found for this device.
Information for BitLocker is obtained using the BitLocker configuration service provider (CSP). BitLocker CSP is supported on Windows 10 version 1703 and later, and for Windows 10 Pro version 1809 and later.
Next steps
Create a device compliance policy for Windows 10 devices to configure BitLocker and encryption.
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Applies to
This topic explains how BitLocker Device Encryption can help protect data on devices running Windows 10.For an architectural overview about how BitLocker Device Encryption works with Secure Boot, see Secure boot and BitLocker Device Encryption overview.For a general overview and list of topics about BitLocker, see BitLocker.
When users travel, their organization’s confidential data goes with them. Wherever confidential data is stored, it must be protected against unauthorized access. Windows has a long history of providing at-rest data-protection solutions that guard against nefarious attackers, beginning with the Encrypting File System in the Windows 2000 operating system. More recently, BitLocker has provided encryption for full drives and portable drives. Windows consistently improves data protection by improving existing options and by providing new strategies.
Table 2 lists specific data-protection concerns and how they are addressed in Windows 10 and Windows 7.
Table 2. Data Protection in Windows 10 and Windows 7
Prepare for drive and file encryption
The best type of security measures are transparent to the user during implementation and use. Every time there is a possible delay or difficulty because of a security feature, there is strong likelihood that users will try to bypass security. This situation is especially true for data protection, and that’s a scenario that organizations need to avoid.Whether you’re planning to encrypt entire volumes, removable devices, or individual files, Windows 10 meets your needs by providing streamlined, usable solutions. In fact, you can take several steps in advance to prepare for data encryption and make the deployment quick and smooth.
TPM pre-provisioning
In Windows 7, preparing the TPM for use offered a couple of challenges:
Basically, it was a big hassle. If IT staff were provisioning new PCs, they could handle all of this, but if you wanted to add BitLocker to devices that were already in users’ hands, those users would have struggled with the technical challenges and would either call IT for support or simply leave BitLocker disabled.
Microsoft includes instrumentation in Windows 10 that enables the operating system to fully manage the TPM. There is no need to go into the BIOS, and all scenarios that required a restart have been eliminated.
Deploy hard drive encryption
BitLocker is capable of encrypting entire hard drives, including both system and data drives. BitLocker pre-provisioning can drastically reduce the time required to provision new PCs with BitLocker enabled. With Windows 10, administrators can turn on BitLocker and the TPM from within the Windows Preinstallation Environment before they install Windows or as part of an automated deployment task sequence without any user interaction. Combined with Used Disk Space Only encryption and a mostly empty drive (because Windows is not yet installed), it takes only a few seconds to enable BitLocker.With earlier versions of Windows, administrators had to enable BitLocker after Windows had been installed. Although this process could be automated, BitLocker would need to encrypt the entire drive, a process that could take anywhere from several hours to more than a day depending on drive size and performance, which significantly delayed deployment. Microsoft has improved this process through multiple features in Windows 10.
BitLocker Device Encryption
Beginning in Windows 8.1, Windows automatically enables BitLocker Device Encryption on devices that support Modern Standby. With Windows 10, Microsoft offers BitLocker Device Encryption support on a much broader range of devices, including those that are Modern Standby, and devices that run Windows 10 Home edition.
Microsoft expects that most devices in the future will pass the testing requirements, which makes BitLocker Device Encryption pervasive across modern Windows devices. BitLocker Device Encryption further protects the system by transparently implementing device-wide data encryption.
Unlike a standard BitLocker implementation, BitLocker Device Encryption is enabled automatically so that the device is always protected. The following list outlines how this happens:
Microsoft recommends that BitLocker Device Encryption be enabled on any systems that support it, but the automatic BitLocker Device Encryption process can be prevented by changing the following registry setting:
Administrators can manage domain-joined devices that have BitLocker Device Encryption enabled through Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM). In this case, BitLocker Device Encryption automatically makes additional BitLocker options available. No conversion or encryption is required, and MBAM can manage the full BitLocker policy set if any configuration changes are required.
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Used Disk Space Only encryption
BitLocker in earlier Windows versions could take a long time to encrypt a drive, because it encrypted every byte on the volume (including parts that did not have data). That is still the most secure way to encrypt a drive, especially if a drive has previously contained confidential data that has since been moved or deleted. In that case, traces of the confidential data could remain on portions of the drive marked as unused.But why encrypt a new drive when you can simply encrypt the data as it is being written? To reduce encryption time, BitLocker in Windows 10 lets users choose to encrypt just their data. Depending on the amount of data on the drive, this option can reduce encryption time by more than 99 percent.Exercise caution when encrypting only used space on an existing volume on which confidential data may have already been stored in an unencrypted state, however, because those sectors can be recovered through disk-recovery tools until they are overwritten by new encrypted data. In contrast, encrypting only used space on a brand-new volume can significantly decrease deployment time without the security risk because all new data will be encrypted as it is written to the disk.
Encrypted hard drive support
SEDs have been available for years, but Microsoft couldn’t support their use with some earlier versions of Windows because the drives lacked important key management features. Microsoft worked with storage vendors to improve the hardware capabilities, and now BitLocker supports the next generation of SEDs, which are called encrypted hard drives.Encrypted hard drives provide onboard cryptographic capabilities to encrypt data on drives, which improves both drive and system performance by offloading cryptographic calculations from the PC’s processor to the drive itself and rapidly encrypting the drive by using dedicated, purpose-built hardware. If you plan to use whole-drive encryption with Windows 10, Microsoft recommends that you investigate hard drive manufacturers and models to determine whether any of their encrypted hard drives meet your security and budget requirements.For more information about encrypted hard drives, see Encrypted Hard Drive.
Preboot information protection
An effective implementation of information protection, like most security controls, considers usability as well as security. Users typically prefer a simple security experience. In fact, the more transparent a security solution becomes, the more likely users are to conform to it.It is crucial that organizations protect information on their PCs regardless of the state of the computer or the intent of users. This protection should not be cumbersome to users. One undesirable and previously commonplace situation is when the user is prompted for input during preboot, and then again during Windows logon. Challenging users for input more than once should be avoided.Windows 10 can enable a true SSO experience from the preboot environment on modern devices and in some cases even on older devices when robust information protection configurations are in place. The TPM in isolation is able to securely protect the BitLocker encryption key while it is at rest, and it can securely unlock the operating system drive. When the key is in use and thus in memory, a combination of hardware and Windows capabilities can secure the key and prevent unauthorized access through cold-boot attacks. Although other countermeasures like PIN-based unlock are available, they are not as user-friendly; depending on the devices’ configuration they may not offer additional security when it comes to key protection. For more information, see BitLocker Countermeasures.
Manage passwords and PINs
When BitLocker is enabled on a system drive and the PC has a TPM, you can choose to require that users type a PIN before BitLocker will unlock the drive. Such a PIN requirement can prevent an attacker who has physical access to a PC from even getting to the Windows logon, which makes it virtually impossible for the attacker to access or modify user data and system files.
Requiring a PIN at startup is a useful security feature because it acts as a second authentication factor (a second “something you know”). This configuration comes with some costs, however. One of the most significant is the need to change the PIN regularly. In enterprises that used BitLocker with Windows 7 and the Windows Vista operating system, users had to contact systems administrators to update their BitLocker PIN or password. This requirement not only increased management costs but made users less willing to change their BitLocker PIN or password on a regular basis.Windows 10 users can update their BitLocker PINs and passwords themselves, without administrator credentials. Not only will this feature reduce support costs, but it could improve security, too, because it encourages users to change their PINs and passwords more often. In addition, Modern Standby devices do not require a PIN for startup: They are designed to start infrequently and have other mitigations in place that further reduce the attack surface of the system.For more information about how startup security works and the countermeasures that Windows 10 provides, see Protect BitLocker from pre-boot attacks.
Configure Network Unlock
Some organizations have location-specific data security requirements. This is most common in environments where high-value data is stored on PCs. The network environment may provide crucial data protection and enforce mandatory authentication; therefore, policy states that those PCs should not leave the building or be disconnected from the corporate network. Safeguards like physical security locks and geofencing may help enforce this policy as reactive controls. Beyond these, a proactive security control that grants data access only when the PC is connected to the corporate network is necessary.
Network Unlock enables BitLocker-protected PCs to start automatically when connected to a wired corporate network on which Windows Deployment Services runs. Anytime the PC is not connected to the corporate network, a user must type a PIN to unlock the drive (if PIN-based unlock is enabled).Network Unlock requires the following infrastructure:
For more information about how to configure Network Unlock, see BitLocker: How to enable Network Unlock.
Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring
Part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, MBAM makes it easier to manage and support BitLocker and BitLocker To Go. MBAM 2.5 with Service Pack 1, the latest version, has the following key features:
For more information about MBAM, including how to obtain it, see Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring on the MDOP TechCenter.
This document was written to provide some methods around decrypting Android Full Disk Encryption. The document assumes that you do not have adb, nor root access to the phone, rather, that you are trying to decrypt a file system which was retrieved by getting a physical dump from the phone (via a physical acquisition, JTAG, chip-off, etc).
Decrypting LG and other Android Full Disk Encryption (FDE)
oclHashcat includes support for decrypting PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA1 + CBC-ESSIV-AES encyption using brute force. The current version at the time of this writing is oclHashcat v1.3.0 which includes GPU accelerated 4-digit PIN brute forcing. See:
Decrypting Samsung Full Disk Encryption (FDE)
At the time of this writing, Samsung 'does things different' than other Android vendors. This may change with later releases of the Android OS releases. For specifics on how Samsung does things different, see the DerbyCon 2013 talk given by László Tóth and Ferenc Spala which covers the technical details. Without their research and effort this document would not be possible!
The process for decrypting Samsung FDE is as follows:
Getting Started
You will need the following tools before you get started:
Optional:
Locating the Encryption Key
Depending on the model of phone and Android version on the device, the location of the password key (or password footer as it's referred to in some cases) varies. According to the research by Tóth and Spala, in some versions of Android the key is located in the last 16K of the encrypted userdata partition. In other Android versions the key is located in /efs/metadata. For these cases, their 'sandy' framework can locate your key quite effectively.
In the case of the testing below, the phone was a Samsung SII SGH-T989D running Android 4.1.2 (with an encryption passphrase of 'test123'). The key in this case was not located in the userdata partition nor /efs/metadata so we manually searched for the ASCII string 'aes-cbc-essiv:sha256' using grep (or the tool of your choice) to locate it. The 'DumpData.bin' is a single 16GB raw image which was acquired from the device.
Let's check the first hit, is that the key? It is! You can tell as the key area we need starts with 0xC5B1B5D0, contains some 'whitespace', then the 'aes-cbc-essiv:sha256', followed by more 'whitespace', and finally the encryption key or encrypted footer which starts with 0xF1DA84CF in our case and is 80 bytes in length. Ultimately, these 80 bytes are all that we want to extract and brute force with JtR. If you want to skip ahead slightly, at this point you could select those 80 hex bytes, save them to a file in JtF format, and start brute forcing with JtR. These steps are covered in more detail below.
Note: The starting 0xC5B1B5D0 bytes were noted to vary slightly between different Android dumps however the variations were minor. Just note that a search for '0xC5B1B5D0' will not always work hence why we search for 'aes-cbc-essiv:sha256'.
In this example we are using 'dd' to extract 512 bytes around the area where our ASCII string was located. In order to show the entire match including the 0xC5B1B5D0 starting point, I am skipping back 36 bytes before the ASCII string hit. 36 is an arbitrary number which is enough in this case to show the starting 0xC5B1B5D0 which is indicative of the start of the area which contains the encryption key.
For fun, let's check the second hit from our previous strings + grep search. You can see that this is not the key as expected so we can ignore this hit.
Now, using the forensic tool of your choice, extract 16384 bytes starting from the 0xC5B1B5D0 hex and save that out as a new file. You don't necessarily need to take all 16384 bytes but for the purpose of this document, let's take 16384 bytes as that number emulates pulling out the last 16K of the encrypted userdata partition.
Your extracted chunk containing the encryption key should look as follows:
Finally, let's further extract just the encryption key and save it out in JtR format. This can either be done with the Sandy framework, a hex editor, dd, xxd, etc. Let's do it with xxd in this case. Note: We are seeking 132 bytes (jumping 132 bytes) into our file for the purpose that we want to grab the 80 bytes starting at 0xF1DA84CF. You can do this manually using the forensic tool of your choice as well. Just make sure you save those 80 bytes to a flat text file like the file we create below.
You can see we have extracted just the key. Let's repeat that and write it out to a file.
That's it! This .jtr file will later be fed into JtR for our brute force attempt.
Installing Sandy
Installing Sandy involves cloning the 'sandy' repository from github. After cloning the repository you will have a 'sandy' directory which contains the Python application.
On supported devices, 'sandy' can be used to extract the encrypted key and convert it to JtR format however as noted previously this did not work in our case. If you are interested in playing with 'sandy', you can start it as follows:
Compiling John The Ripper (JtR) Jumbo with the sandcrypt plugin
Start by exploding your JtR jumbo source code and copying the sandcrypt plugin (from the 'sandy' installation) into the 'src' tree of JtR. After that you can start your compilation:
Note: If you receive an error about '<openssl/HMAC.h>' when JtR is compiling 'sandcrypt_fmt_plug.c', please ensure you have pulled the latest version of 'sandy' from github. An issue previously existed which was corrected in the latest revision.
Brute forcing the Samsung Android FDE
The first thing you will need is a wordlist file. For the purpose of this document, my sample wordlist file is as follows. If you would like to generate a wordlist you can use the tool of your choice or use 'crunch' which is optionally included at the bottom of this document. When generating your wordlist please keep in mind that Samsung FDE specifically requires 6 characters including 1 digit. Note: The wordlist is likely the most important part of the decryption and should be crafted with care.
Once the compilation of 'john' has completed you can change into the 'run' directory which is where the 'john' binary is located. Now you can run 'john', provide it your wordlist, the sandcrypt plugin, and the Samsung FDE .jtr you created earlier.
Success! JtR identified 'test123' as the decryption password.
Note: If you run 'john' a second time you will notice that it doesn't crack any passwords! The reason being is that 'john' is smart enough to keep track of passwords it has already processed and it stores these in a 'john.pot' file. If you delete the 'john.pot' file then 'john' will reattempt cracking the passwords again.
Optional: Wordlist generation
You can use 'crunch' to generate a '6 character including 1 digit' wordlist or bigger wordlist. Start by extracting the crunch source code and compiling it as follows:
Now, as an example, let's generate a wordlist that is 6 -> 8 characters in length which is just comprised of digits.
Here is what our wordlist.txt looks like:
You can now use this wordlist for your JtR attempt to crack the FDE.
Retrieved from 'https://forensicswiki.org/index.php?title=How_To_Decrypt_Android_Full_Disk_Encryption&oldid=14569'
based on my previous knowledge, I know that the iPhone has hardware encryption implemented on recent models. When we issue the 'Erase all contents and settings' command, the encryption keys are destroyed, making the data within the device useless.
Android also provides encryption by using dm-crypt and I believe it encrypts everything when the device is in boot stage. Now let's say I reset the device to factory settings. I know that without encryption, I can recover a significant amount of data by acquiring and carving files from the physical image. However, I am wondering if there has been any research done on acquiring an encrypted image after resetting to factory settings and recovering useful data from it.
I've found that some presentations from defcon and such sort of delve into this topic but I was wondering if there is anything more concrete out there.
Thanks for the help.
AlistairAlistair
3 Answers
The principle is the same whether Apple or Google does it. Most of the data stored on the device (including all user data — everything but some startup code and of course the encryption key) is encrypted, and the only way to decrypt it is with a key that is stored on the device. (The key may be itself encrypted with the unlock passcode, but that's a separate matter. For our purposes here, there is a key file, which contains the key in a potentially-recoverable form.)
Once you wipe the key file, there is no way to recover any of the encrypted data. The only information you may be able to get is a rough upper bound for how much data was stored on the device, and even this only if the device was not initialized with random data — I don't know if all Android integrations do this. The data itself can only be recovered with the key.
The data may be recoverable if you've backed up the key outside the device (or if you've backed up the data itself of course). As long as you don't leak your key backups, the data is unrecoverable once the key on the device has been wiped.
In both cases — Apple or Google — it may be possible to recover the key file from the part of the flash storage that is currently unused due to wear leveling, if that part happens to contain the key file. This isn't something you can do in software, you need a bit of electronic equipment and fiddling with the flash storage (I think you have to unsolder it from the board, which is already a major stopper for casual attackers and kills the device's resale value).
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GillesGilles
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At best, this question is asking us to Google a specific research for you. So I flagged it as 'Not Constructive'.
First I'd start with checking the implementation notes, a quick look can tell you many things. They're using 128-bit AES-CBC ESSIV:SHA256, which seems top-notch to me.
A closer look would tell you that they're not encrypting the SD card. They explain in relative details what's encrypted, how it's encrypted, when it's encrypted, and when it's decrypted.If you look in other places you'll also find that the password is limited to 16 characters.
Armed with that knowledge, now you have enough information to go on your own. A quick search on the site and you'll see this beautiful answer by The Bear explaining the scenario you're asking about.
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AdiAdi
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There has been research done on the ability to recover data from an Android device that issuing the stock Android encryption. There was a similar question that you could peruse. You could also check out the Frost ROM. Which was a recovery ROM built to demonstrate the potential for using a cold boot attack to recovery key data from an encrypted device, their paper does imply that the standard device wipe/factory reset provides a reasonable level of protection after an encrypted device has been wiped
Unfortunately, the unlocking process wipes the userdata and cache partition and thus, searching for the AES key after unlocking becomes pointless (although still possible). We verified that the Galaxy Nexus actually wipes the userdata and cache partition, meaning that it zero-fills them.
The wiping process implemented by Google is commendable as it even renders data recovery in the case of non-encrypted partitions difficult.
Hope this helps.
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dudebrobrodudebrobro
Forenseinc On Encrypted Device DownloadNot the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged androidforensics or ask your own question.Comments are closed.
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