External Fully Encrypted SSD Drive. What do you think?

[load...@gmail.com]

Hi everyone,

I am thinking now to buy a Macbook Pro 16' and use this laptop in 2 different ways:

1. Mac OS for non-working tasks on internal drive.
2. Qubes OS for all working process on external encrypted drive.


So for External Encrypted Drive I chose:
https://istorage-uk.com/product/diskashur2/

One of the important tech specs is SSD Speed:
361MB/s Read
358MB/s Write


So I have 2 questions:

1. Is this enough for comfort using Qubes OS with this speed of SSD?

2. What kind of Hardware Encrypted Drive do you know which has more speed capacity?


P.S.
I know that most of you could tell me that this is not very smart to do this way, but I have my own reasons why I need external and encrypted drive. When I will finish this setup I will write full guide how I am using Qubes OS and hope it would helps someone to understand which way to use is better for each one.

[Chris Laprise]

On 7/28/20 7:09 AM, load...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I am thinking now to buy a Macbook Pro 16' and use this laptop in 2
> different ways:
>

> 1. /Mac OS/ for non-working tasks on internal drive.
> 2. /Qubes OS/ for all working process on external encrypted drive.

>
>
> So for External Encrypted Drive I chose:
> https://istorage-uk.com/product/diskashur2/
>

> _One of the important tech specs is SSD Speed:_
> 361MB/s /Read/
> 358MB/s /Write/
>
>
> _So I have 2 questions:
>
> _*1. Is this enough for comfort using Qubes OS with this speed of SSD?

This is highly subjective but I would consider it fast enough.

>
> 2. What kind of _Hardware_ Encrypted Drive do you know which has more
> speed capacity?*

Not that I'm aware. However, for a better security profile you might
check out Samsung's SSD products; I recall some of their models were
considered exemplary in a security review where most other brands had
major issues.

>
>
> P.S.
> I know that most of you could tell me that this is not very smart to do
> this way, but I have my own reasons why I need external and encrypted
> drive. When I will finish this setup I will write full guide how I am
> using Qubes OS and hope it would helps someone to understand which way
> to use is better for each one.

You're probably aware that Qubes on a USB drive means you can't use
'sys-usb' which means you can't block 'badUSB' attacks. That is one
compromise.

Another problem is that Macs typically experience more compatibility
issues with Linux.

Also: The Mac laptop keyboards are USB, not PS/2 as most "PC" laptops
are. USB internal keyboard is problematic with Qubes features like
sys-usb and anti-evil-maid.

Finally, Macs only give you Intel CPUs to choose from and those suffer a
lot more from side-channel vulnerabilities than other brands including
AMD. (FYI, Intel just fired their head of engineering and Intel Macs may
soon be in the dustbin category when Apple switches to ARM-based Macs.)

So I'd say that overall you're setting yourself up for the least optimal
experience, at least on all the Qubes-related fronts. I very much get
the attraction of OS X, but in 2020 the only real appeal of Mac hardware
is the exterior design and 16:10 screen. OTOH, a business model from HP,
Lenovo or Dell should net you the best Qubes compatibility and you can
get a top-performing 8-core system for less than what an MBP costs.

--
Chris Laprise, tas...@posteo.net
https://github.com/tasket
https://twitter.com/ttaskett
PGP: BEE2 20C5 356E 764A 73EB 4AB3 1DC4 D106 F07F 1886

[load...@gmail.com]

First of all, I appreciate for you answers.

17:38:31 UTC+3, Chris Laprise:

Not that I'm aware. However, for a better security profile you might
check out Samsung's SSD products; I recall some of their models were
considered exemplary in a security review where most other brands had
major issues.

Could you please tell me which Samsung models has Hardware encryption? I mean without any software which needs to be installed.

 

Finally, Macs only give you Intel CPUs to choose from and those suffer a
lot more from side-channel vulnerabilities than other brands including
AMD. (FYI, Intel just fired their head of engineering and Intel Macs may
soon be in the dustbin category when Apple switches to ARM-based Macs.)

So it means that Qubes will not work on ARM CPUs?

 

So I'd say that overall you're setting yourself up for the least optimal
experience, at least on all the Qubes-related fronts. I very much get
the attraction of OS X, but in 2020 the only real appeal of Mac hardware
is the exterior design and 16:10 screen. OTOH, a business model from HP,
Lenovo or Dell should net you the best Qubes compatibility and you can
get a top-performing 8-core system for less than what an MBP costs.

If it's not difficult for you, can you recommend specific models that are of the same quality and build level as the MacBook, or maybe even better? Price doesn't matter.

 

[Qubes]

On 7/28/20 7:04 PM, load...@gmail.com wrote:
> Could you please tell me which Samsung models has*Hardware* encryption? I

> mean without any software which needs to be installed.

I stand to be corrected but this is not unique to Samsung. SSDs,
although I think some don't have this enabled out of the factory, by
default encrypt the data before it gets written to the chips. This is
not the sort of encryption that will stop someone else from looking at
your data if they get your drive because the drive does not know who has
it. Who ever has an SSD can plug it in and ask it to read the data on
itself and the drive willfully decrypts itself and presents its data.
Unlike LUKS for example where the user has to provide the decryption
key, which in essence is a second layer of encryption. However, you can
securely erase any SSDs data by simply creating a new encryption key for
the drive to use to encrypt the data before it gets written to the
chips. Any other form of destroying data on an SSD, like DBAN for
example, is a complete waste of time and you are actually destroying the
drive instead of your data.

Partition Magic can be used to create a new DEK (Drive Encryption Key)
on an SSD, but PM is not free anymore. You can still download the last
free version that was available before it became a paid product which
was in 2013. It still works I have used it, but you have other options
as well. Most manufacturers provide tools, but these are mostly windowz
based, that will perform a secure erase on your SSD, which effectively
creates a new DEK. I have not had much success with Samsung's tools. Or
any other manufacturers tools to be honest.

My best advice is to use the hdparm utility which in reality is what PM
uses. If I want to wipe a drive securely I usually use Tiny Core linux
because (1) it is really small and quick to download and put on a USB
stick and it boots in a flash and (2) it ships with the hdparm utility
out of the box.

This is the most useful instructions that I have found on the web for
hdparm, https://grok.lsu.edu/Article.aspx?articleid=16716

Do not rely on your SSDs hardware encryption for security however,
https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/you-cant-trust-bitlocker-to-encrypt-your-ssd-on-windows-10/.
That said, deleting the DEK and creating a new one is still 100% safe as
the key has been deleted making the 'data' on the disk squigly goop. The
blank password in this case is not a problem.

[ludwig...@gmail.com]

"Hardware Encrypted Drive do you know which has more speed capacity"

can you trust the drive?

What if it saves a spare set of encryption keys somewhere in its flash for the "lawful investigator" to find?

So do "hardware assisted crypto" only in addition to your crypto you trust in, which is open source crypto which has

been reviewed and reached a state of maturity.

[Qubes]

On 7/29/20 1:56 AM, ludwig...@gmail.com wrote:
> *What if it saves a spare set of encryption keys somewhere in its flash for
> the "lawful investigator" to find?*
>
I am not aware of any proof to support this line of thinking.

[Catacombs]

.

If it's not difficult for you, can you recommend specific models that are of the same quality and build level as the MacBook, or maybe even better? Price doesn't matter.

 

I presume you are asking about which computer one might buy?   I will say some things, and hope someone more knowledgeable will come along and correct me.

I own a 2009 MBP, and using Qubes on it was problematic.  True it is older hardware and a different firmware than today.  Once I was speaking with person in a computer store, who is much more knowledgeable than myself.  We both agreed we loved Apple, its OS X, its method of doing support and we did not like it was way more expensive than other computers.    He said he would never buy another Apple.  Price versus Security he would use Linux on a Windows type machine for better Security;.  Also one of the reasons Apple always "just Works," is that they are control freaks.  They want to limit the way their computer is used.   Although in 20010 when I called them after my MBP would not start after trying to use Linux, they never laughed.  They still had some of the original Apple mystique of people should be allowed to modify the device, a crafty kind of hobby.   

Today the Apple OS is used to keep all of ones personal files, media in sync across all of ones Apple devices.  Phones, Ipads, Computers, multiple family members.  Feels to me like a huge Security hole. and Syncing is another one of those innovations that is like constant update.  It presumes I have an always available high speed network to accomplish all that Syncing, Cloud activity.  But I don't use the later Mac OS.  

I thought I would come on here, and suggest alternative computers, and let others tell me why I am wrong.  and I probably am.  

One the Qubes WebSite there are a list of computers which has been tried for Qubes, and any things which do not work for any model.  You have probably seen it.  

First of all, My Opinion.  Qubes users seem to gravitate towards using laptops on the thought that if one has a fixed Internet Connection, that is less secure.  An ISP can completely capture the internet connection.  Kinda like AOL.  American On Line used to be an Internet provider where one logged into AOL, which watched everything the individual did, and passed that through to the internet.  

There is a Hardware Compatibility List:  Well, security says you should not use links I send you.  So I will not send you fewer links.  

Qubes webpage has  a list of Certified Hardware, which is computers they have approved to be used with Qubes.   Actually an older laptop, which has been modified.  They have two different suppliers, one is in Europe, the other in Canada.  The computer that has been modified is a Lenovo X-230.  I know that the Insurgo model, in Canada is very generous in describing all the modifications they have made to get it to be Certified.  I have tried to emulate those changes to an X-230.    I have not gotten there yet.   

There is yet another thing.  The Lenovo X230, if you have one in that stuff you described, it is easy to remove and replace the drive.  I bought two 128 GB SSD's for this at twenty something dollars each (oh I am in US) and therefore I can easily use different fully installed versions of Linux.   

To use Pure Linux on a Lenovo X230, one would need to install a driver for WiFi.  Easy for an experienced Linux user with an ethernet connection.   

Since there is some possibility you might have a Lenovo X230, I would warn you of some of the ways things it would be easy to do that would be wrong, I did them.   To detail my experience. 

I bought an Lenovo X-230 Core I5, 4 GB RAM online for about US $228.00.  I could not afford the Core I7.  I paid another hundred for 16 GB RAM.  

Now my mistakes:   I upgraded the BIOS/EFI to the highest level.   

Why it was a mistake.   The Lenovo X230 RAM comes with the Intel Management Engine security hazard.      That is, Intel Management Engine on the main processor had its own modem so Intel can install new Firmware instructions.   Someone said that no one has ever seen Intel try to reprogram the basic instructions.   One of the modifications made by Insurgo version of the Certified Hardware is to install CoreBoot in place of the standard Intel stuff.   

Lenovo further complicated my issues with their BIOS/EFI upgrade.  Which is best explained in the documentation for the jailbreak.    1vyrain If the jail break is installed, one can use other batteries (for some functions) besides an official Lenovo Battery, and one can use a different WiFI than the one that comes installed by Lenovo.   Insurgo changes to a different open source WiFi Wireless Adapter.  The one supplied by Lenovo also has a driver inside the Intel Management Engine.   Meaning if one does not use a Wireless adapter that is one of the ones already inside the Intel Management Engine, it can not phone home to the Mothership for new instructions.  When I did a standard upgrade of the BIOS/EFI, Lenovo encrypted the firmware, so they did not intend for me to change it.   1vyrain The Jail Break can not be run on my Lenovo X-230.  I thought I would warn you before you did what I did.  As someone pointed out, If I put USB Wireless Adapter in, and make sure I do not let the internal Lenovo WiFi connect, It can still not phone home to the Mothership.  

The more sophisticated thing to do is to install Skulls, which involves opening the computer, using wires to re program the main chip.  and possibly bricking the MOBO.  Which it appears some have done, and no one has offered to help them.  The jail break might do the same.   It is because of those difficulties, and some more, that what is being sold as a Certified Qubes Computer is likely a fair price.  

There is company in the US that manufactures computers, and phone meant for privacy enthusiasts.  https://puri.sm/  or as they say, never trust the link, so search for Pure, Librem.

They offer later Intel Chips, but with Core Boot.   You need to read a bunch of what they have fixed, changed for a privacy computer built from the component selection up.  Their OS is a version of Debian, or one can install Qubes, (or pay them to install Qubes).   

I thought I might say something about Dell computers.  Two things.  Dell ventilation for heat reduction is on the bottom of the computer.  If one sits a dell on a blanket,   after awhile.  Yes overheating. 

Dell makes two different styles of computers.  One for the general public, and another, higher quality, for businesses.  Business laptops are quite good.  I know a guy who had a computer shop and used to make a living selling older, new battery installed versions of the business laptops for three hundred.  Economy got him.  Plus kids love computers with lots of color and brand new, business computers are usually black.  Said none of the ones he sold came back as defective.  For one thing.  Business people are not children and take care of computers. 

Dell makes an XPS Developers Edition, that comes with Ubuntu.   This is a higher quality business class computer, and since Ubuntu comes on it, I would guess nearly any Linux would work. 

I mistakenly bought an Alienware instead of an XPS.  (Dell owns Alienware).  But I have had great experiences with Alienware Support.   I am guessing all of Dell Support is similar. I would again buy Dell Support to the point where the price goes drastically up.   Most of the reasons I needed to use Alienware support was because of something I did.   Like, I needed a new battery for my first Alienware from them.  The support of the battery replacement had gone out a year before, but I had a charging issue with a battery early on (actually I messed up the percentage of charge on the battery using Linux, and Windows couldn't fix the percentage of charge.  I am guessing a re-install of Windows would have fixed that.  but I did not realize that.)  Still I had month or two of the two year Alienware Warranty on the rest of the computer.  I offered to buy a new battery, they did not have new batteries.   But they offered to replace my 2013 14 inch Alienware (based on a 2012 design) with a refurbished 2016 with the 2016 Intel processor, Skylake.  and so on.  At the end of my 2016 model support, I had white spots on the screen.   As part of their support, they had me ship it in.  They replaced the screen Video Card, and the outside of the computer, can back looking brand new.  The battery behaves like it is a new battery, although, once again, they did not offer a battery for this model for sale.  I am guessing they had bunch of new or newish parts laying in bins that were never going to be used, as everyone else has bought new computers.   Maybe they felt sorry for my being on Social Security (Old age pension) and could not afford a new something.  

Still Alienware Support required I use Windows to utilize their support.   Alienware firmware does not refuse to boot Linux, but the Alienware Firmware is dovetailed to Windows for a lot of things like colored lights on keyboard.   Alienware BIOS/EFI is closely dovetailed to Windows.   So never buy Alienware. 

  

But I believe that the XPS Developers edition would have excellent support.  If we could just get them to put in only FOSS hardware, and use Core Boot rather than the proprietary firmware EFI/BIOS.   But how can we trust a big company not to be influenced by a governments security services.   

  Sorry if I babbled on too much.  Try not to feel offended if I spoke about things you know a lot about.  I can't know what it is you, or don't know.  So I presume the lowest level.  No Offense meant.  

I will wait for more knowledgeable people to tell me where I am wrong, I often am. and we have a lot of experienced people here.

[Steve Coleman]

In the case of an Opal 2.0 encrypted drive the key is *never* stored on the device. That is a requirement in oder to meet the defined Opal standard, and any manufacturer needs to prove that they meet that standard by submitting to a gauntlet of independently run certification tests. They can't fake passing these tests.

The key(s) are generated at runtime by combining some internally generated entropy plus the user supplied 256 bit password. If you reset the drive then the internal entropy is regenerated as well, so even when having the users old password one can not dynamically generate the origional decryption key. 

This basically means that if you build in a failsafe mechanism into your software, to detect tampering, and flip the bits of your key and reset the drive, that data is not recoverable even when provided the prior password. Good luck at ever recovering that data even for your own purposes. Your "lawfull investigator" has no better chance than the KGB at ever recovering/seeing your data. 

For a dead man's kill switch, Just reset the device and force a power down and that data is no longer recoverable. 

If you do not fully reset the device and only powered down, then the data is only recoverable using the users 256 bit (hopefully randomized) password. Even then the drives internal logic will add an increasing delay with each invalid passrord attempt is made thus making even brute forcing the password completely impractical. 

Adding software encryption on top of that hardware layer encryption is a good belt and suspenders approach if you really don't trust the device itself to fully protect you. 

I had the pleasure of working with one of the origional designers of this standard, for almost a year while developing some very custom solutions with these devices. While the first Opal 1.0 devices certainly had some quirks, I trust the current line of Opal 2.0 SSD Sed devices to keep your data both safe and confidential. 

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[brenda...@gmail.com]

My position: if you have critical secrets, then your solution should be combining belt and suspenders, that is, you should apply layers of encryption with different keys and passwords.

1. First if your main drive supports it, enable hardware encryption. Even if you don't trust the device manufacturer (perhaps they, as posited aove "save a spare set of encryption keys somewhere in its flash"*), it is still an additional layer of protection. In particular, the password/pin should be different than password/pin used for LUKS in section #2 for separation of trust. This can also provide some boot drive tamper protection by at least a subset of attackers.

  alternate 1a. boot qubes off of a a SED SATA/NVME drive: implement using something like sedutil or even TCP Opal Class 0 encryption if your BIOS supports it (Class 0 leverages the TCG Opal SED engine using an ATA Password with some bits of security lost due to password filtering depending upon BIOS implementation) and you semi-trust the drive manufacturer.

  alternate 1b. boot qubes off of a USB drive with a hardware encryption bridge/enclosure and a pinpad password (very long is better, if supported). Again, you must semi-trust the manufacturer of the encryption engine, of course.

2. Set up qubes with a LUKS layer and a password (pretty much, the standard install) on the drive you have configured above. You must semi-trust the Qubes, LUKS and linux developers, of course (open source allows audit, so either do it yourself or...hope/verify someone else did). Password should be different than the hardware device password in #1 for separation of trust.

Above are the basic belt and suspenders.

Section #1 utilizes the hardware encryption you may already have and gives you a bonus of some additional protection against modification of the boot data on the drive. The TCG Opal Class 0 approach should not interfere with installation of AEM. Standard TCG Opal via sedutil requires additional custom work to support AEM.

Section #2 gives you the more trusted layer of software encryption.

Now for some additional soap-box comments, generally under the heading of Qubes currently != anti-forensics:

1. Disposable VMs do not promise any anti-forensics properties if your system is up and running (that is, the LUKS volume is mounted). Disposable VMs have a primary purpose which is not to "forget" information, but rather to prevent attacks inside a VM from being permanent (prevent foothold) and partition your data so that attacks within the disposable VMs cannot accessing your data. Typically**, the data used in a disposable VM remains on the storage device even after the VM is shutdown until that space is needed again to store something else.

2. Attaching devices to dom0 puts dom0 at risk. Even unmounted devices can be unintentionally automatically mounted or at least partition/volume scanned when running various toolkit-based executables such as thunar (xfce's file explorer equivalent) or anything else that invokes the xfce windowing toolkit components or similar in dom0.

3. Attaching devices to dom0 can pollute dom0 memory/storage with content from that device. For the above reasons, among others.

4. Fragments of VM sessions can end up in the dom0 or GUIVM user folder and/or system/application logs. E.g. one can find the window titles of domU VM windows (including disposable VMs or even VMs stored in secondary pools) stored in the dom0 main user's dot (hidden) directories.

5. Until very recent changes to the qubes thin pool driver (available in 4.1 only?), disposable VM's volatile volumes on LVM were always being stored in the primary pool. EVEN if the disposable VM and the disposable VM templates were stored in a secondary pool on a separately encrypted device. This behavior was surprising to many and I consider it a defect.

Hope this is helpful,

Brendan

* Most SED/TCG OPAL drives can be fully rekeyed using one or more of the following ATA SANITIZE CRYPTO EXT, ATA SECURE ERASE ENHANCED, or a PSID REVERT. Some support all three invocations, some a subset. Some manufacturers go out of their way to *only* rekey (and not erase) when invoking the first two, so you can check to see your data is irrevocably scrambled after invocation. Ok, maybe you don't trust the drive manufacturer to not log all keys in the clear for entities they have relations with? Fine. But at least get in the practice of rekeying the drive a couple times before putting data on it that way if they're only storing the factory key, well...(takes off tin foil hat).

** Note that the Qubes thin volume storage driver will attempt to perform "opportunistic" anti-forensics, with no strong guarantee, when an lvm volume is removed by the drive. It does this by invoking a blkdiscard against the thin volume before removal when removal is invoked. If the user has enabled trim through the LUKS layer in dom0 (not a default setting, and setting choice depends upon your threat model)...and the physical storage device supports discard/trim, that encrypted data will be removed from the user-facing data interface on the drive (though may still linger for a while before the containing blocks are erased). In addition, if the physical drive supporting trim is a TCG Opal SED device that is well-behaved, an additional layer of obfuscation kicks in which is that the physical blocks are no longer mapped to the logical blocks, and since in most known implementations, the logical block number is part of the IV for the AES applied to the data on the physical block, now both the software *and* hardware level IVs are lost for that doubly encrypted data that is in the erase queue. But mostly, the opportunistic anti-forensics is about the discard/trim at the physical drive level: removing the blocks from the user-facing data interface plus queuing up the blocks to be erased in the primary erase queue at some future point.

[Mark Fernandes]

On Tuesday, 28 July 2020 at 12:09:39 UTC+1 load...@gmail.com wrote:

...

I am thinking now to buy a Macbook Pro 16' and use this laptop in 2 different ways:

1. Mac OS for non-working tasks on internal drive.
2. Qubes OS for all working process on external encrypted drive.


So for External Encrypted Drive I chose:

...

So I have 2 questions:

1. Is this enough for comfort using Qubes OS with this speed of SSD?

2. What kind of Hardware Encrypted Drive do you know which has more speed capacity?


P.S.
I know that most of you could tell me that this is not very smart to do this way, but I have my own reasons why I need external and encrypted drive. When I will finish this setup I will write full guide how I am using Qubes OS and hope it would helps someone to understand which way to use is better for each one.

Hello "load...@gmail.com",

Just been perusing the email conversation so far with regard to your enquiry. Interesting thoughts. Regarding writing a full guide, I have produced some documentation on End-user Computer Security on the Wikibooks site here. I would like it to be a general free repository of knowledge, guidance, and wisdom. If you are able to add to it in regard to your full guide, that may be quite helpful for the general community--even just posting a link to your guide there, would probably be helpful.

In respect of which encrypted SSD drive to use, I have no suggestions. However, the thought has occurred to me that you might get more security if you load Qubes to RAM from a DVD drive. Some info on why this may be the case, is shown here. Not sure whether it is feasible though, and your "encrypted SSD" plan might be sufficient for your purposes.

Kind regards,

Mark Fernandes