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In the case of disk encryption applications that can be configured to allow the operating system to boot without a pre-boot PIN being entered or a hardware key being present (e.g. BitLocker in a simple configuration that uses a TPM without a two-factor authentication PIN or USB key), the time frame for the attack is not limiting at all. [2]
An attacker could, for example, use a social engineering attack and send a "lucky winner" a rogue Thunderbolt device. Upon connecting to a computer, the device, through its direct and unimpeded access to the physical address space, would be able to bypass almost all security measures of the OS and have the ability to read encryption keys, install malware, or control other system devices.
BitLocker is a logical volume encryption system. (A volume spans part of a hard disk drive, the whole drive or more than one drive.) When enabled, TPM and BitLocker can ensure the integrity of the trusted boot path (e.g. BIOS and boot sector), in order to prevent most offline physical attacks and boot sector malware. [38]
With encrypted drives a complete and secure data erasure action takes just a few milliseconds with a simple key change, so a drive can be safely repurposed very quickly. This sanitisation activity is protected in SEDs by the drive's own key management system built into the firmware in order to prevent accidental data erasure with confirmation ...
Note that this does not imply that the encrypted disk can be used as the boot disk itself; refer to pre-boot authentication in the features comparison table. Partition: Whether individual disk partitions can be encrypted. File: Whether the encrypted container can be stored in a file (usually implemented as encrypted loop devices).
With a software implementation, the bootstrapping code cannot be encrypted however. For example, BitLocker Drive Encryption leaves an unencrypted volume to boot from, while the volume containing the operating system is fully encrypted. With full disk encryption, the decision of which individual files to encrypt is not left up to users' discretion.
[1] [2] The post detailed a method for compromising the firmware on an unattended computer via an external USB flash drive – and therefore bypassing TrueCrypt disk encryption. [2] D. Defreez, a computer security professional, first mentioned the possibility of an evil maid attack on Android smartphones in 2011. [1]
dm-crypt is a transparent block device encryption subsystem in Linux kernel versions 2.6 and later and in DragonFly BSD.It is part of the device mapper (dm) infrastructure, and uses cryptographic routines from the kernel's Crypto API.