(Images: How to bypass FileVault, BitLocker security)

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A few things to note

Interesting read, but I'm not totally convinced the other theoretical vectors of attack would work.

This mostly shows that boot from LAN should be turned off unless you really use it. That's how it was done in this case - he was able to run his own software on the target machine because the target machine was set up to use NetBoot. Netboot should, IMHO, be turned off on all Macs, and the default should be off from the factory.

I'm not quite convinced the compressed air trick will work very well - memory normally needs to be refreshed every milliseconds, and I doubt compressed air would increase that to enough time to install it into a new computer and boot the new computer.

10% decay does sound reasonable - that's 12 to 25 bits, which is easily breakable. That is, if they can figure out which bits are decayed and which ones aren't.

"The answer is simple: an Apple utility called "hdiutil" can display the AES key for a FileVault volume as long as the passphrase is typed in first."

Interesting - the hacker can't work without a pass phrase! Perhaps Declan McCullagh is only being fooled - perhaps it's simply that the pass phrase is used to create the key?

I'm not familiar with how FileVault works, but it smells very fishy that the hacker actually needed his pass phrase to make it work.

At the very least, this shows that the hacker needs to get a copy of the pass phrase before successfully hacking it, and that if this is a random theft, it should be safe.

Posted by: CobraA1   Posted on: 02/21/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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