Filevault 2 (switcher's nightmare)

Since we are all aware that filevault2 has been cracked (in a mere matter of minutes), what is the best way to secure the entirety of your Mac OS operating system. The truecrypt manual says it supports full disk system encryption for a variety of winblows devices, but not mac.


Are there any secure alternatives that you can personally recommend?

I also heard that so long as your computer isn't in "sleep" mode, FV2 will still hold it's integrity. Is this true?


Thanks and as always:

Love,
Ring

Ring said:

I also heard that so long as your computer isn't in "sleep" mode, FV2 will still hold it's integrity. Is this true?

Click to expand...

Yep, as I'm sure you read in the article the tool only works if the key is stored in memory. That ain't happening after you power off.

Dysfunction said:

Yep, as I'm sure you read in the article the tool only works if the key is stored in memory. That ain't happening after you power off.

Click to expand...

well somebody determined could freeze your computer and attempt to capture the ram data


lol

It may take billions of years for somebody to find the correct 265 bit encryption key, but theoretically, a password guessing program could also guess the correct passphrase in the first 5 tries.

Basically, not a single encryption scheme on this planet will help you if you loose physical control over your data and someone gets lucky.

Filevault 2 does exactly what I expect from it.
It may not help me if the FBI want to get at my data. (Seeing as they probably could just lock me up till I fess up and give them the password) but if I ever have my laptop stolen or it gets lost I can rest easy knowing my files are safe from pretty much everybody.

McYukon said:

It may take billions of years for somebody to find the correct 265 bit encryption key, but theoretically, a password guessing program could also guess the correct passphrase in the first 5 tries.

Basically, not a single encryption scheme on this planet will help you if you loose physical control over your data and someone gets lucky.

Filevault 2 does exactly what I expect from it.
It may not help me if the FBI want to get at my data. (Seeing as they probably could just lock me up till I fess up and give them the password) but if I ever have my laptop stolen or it gets lost I can rest easy knowing my files are safe from pretty much everybody.

Click to expand...

I'm not hiding from the FBI, lol. I would freely and gladly attempt to decrypt anything upon request from the FBI.

Security is fun though, and it is good to be secure. And for some reason, I fundamentally distrust closed source security software.

The original story from which you're quoting about Filevault 2 has been somewhat discredited:

FileVault encryption keys easily uncovered, warns Passware | MacNN

(be sure to read the comments)

The circumstances under which your Filevault password could be retrieved are, to put it mildly, exceptional. They are also identical to any other security system, as MacYukon said. Filevault is no more "cracked" than anything else.

I have always taken a very dim view of Filevault being used outside of occupational requirements, as the potential for data loss was so high (a problem I witnessed MANY TIMES as a former technician). Filevault 2 addresses some of those concerns.

Ring: there's nothing "closed source" about Filevault. It's merely an implementation of open-source, well-known encryption standards