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Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmail com> wrote:
> > Isn't that what encryption is for?
> No, encryption is that big red flag that says you've got something to hide.
Well, there are rather ingenuous encrypting programs out there, such as
TrueCrypt.
It's completely impossible to see from a TrueCrypt-encrypted file that
it's an encrypted file. It just looks like random data and it's completely
impossible to *prove* that it's actually an encrypted file, even if you
knew it was. TrueCrypt puts absolutely no headers nor any other distinctive
data in the file which could be a sign that it's an encrypted file created
with it. It's just random data, period. Someone could at most suspect that
it's an encrypted file, but he has no way of proving it.
The tricks offered by TrueCrypt don't end there. You can create encrypted
files (which internally work as a file system) with a hidden portion. In
other words, the file is divided into two parts, the main part and the
hidden part, each one encrypted with a different key.
The idea is that you put your sensitive data, the one you really want
to protect, in the hidden part. In the main part you put something which
looks believably sensitive, but isn't really. You could put eg. (legal)
porn pics there or whatever, which one could believably want to encrypt.
If someone suspects that the file is an encrypted file and forces you to
give them the key, you can give them the key to the main part. They will
then decrypt the contents with that key, and they will get your porn pics
from there and that's it. The hidden part will look like empty space at
the end of the file system, and again there's absolutely no hints that
there actually is some additional data there, nor is it possible prove it
by any means. It's all random garbage.
When you want to access your data in the hidden part, you decrypt with
the second key, which will then access that hidden part rather than the
main part.
--
- Warp
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