TrueCrypt: Should I Use It?

Thanks for the information!

 

note to self: never travel to UK!

 

Why risk it? You know you can actually live without computer's

 

FWIW, a 1998 article at the BBC also reports on that incident:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/150465.stm

so that was going on even before the massive increase in government surveillance that occurred after 9/11, etc. A 2008 story I stumbled across:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/crossing_border.html#c271149

mentioned UK border officials inspecting someone's laptop and MP3 player. Actually looking at files on the later and presumably the former as well. It seems like everything has gotten worse since the financial crisis so I doubt things have changed for the better.

 

first of all I dont think there are many laptop data checks at airports,they dont have that much time and manpower to search each and every laptop,searching a laptop is more time consuming than searching a luggage.it is just random checks,say 1 in 10,000.But you might be unlucky at some day and that is what you should be prepared for.

so whats the solution for authority laptop checks?none?

I know forensics can figure out if a partition is encrypted or not but is it like 100% sure thing?what if I encrypt one of my partition and on questioning,simply say that I'm not using this partition and it is not encrypted,it is just some unused partition,so how can i decrypt it?

 

Does anyone know of an easier guide to setup TrueCrypt than the guides on the official TC web site?

 

From the comments of this thread, one can make a wrong assumption that the highest level of forensic investigators are working at the border crossing.
How much money are they making per hour?

 

I've made a few recent trips, between here and the U.S., even passed through China twice. The only thing I had to do with my laptop was pull it from the bag and put it in it's own tray for the bag scanner. I have never been asked to open it.

 

Despite the impression given by the dense and detailed truecrypt documentation, it actually quite easy to setup Truecrypt. Really, if you're capable of posting on a forum, you're capable of running Truecrypt. The Truecrypt GUI is well done and will lead you through the set-up steps (which turn out to be simple and easy).

That being said, there are lots of good and well illustrated web pages that can guide you through the set-up process. I'd be glad to point you to one if I knew what you are trying to set-up. Do you want to encrypt a Windows System partition, or the complete Windows hard drive? Or do you want to encrypt a new or preexisting hard drive partition (for storage of encrypted stuff)? Do you just want to encrypt various files (as encrypted container files)?

Again, you'll be amazed just how easy any of the above will turn out to be. But if you'll give some details on what you want to do, I or someone else here can point you to a web page illustrating TrueCrypt setup.

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D'Oh! Just read your first post -- and understand (I think) what you want to do.

Here's a link to one web page illustrating Truecrypt set up (there are plenty of others).
http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/windows-security/creating-a-standard-encrypted-partition-with-truecrypt/

However, there's a big 'but' involved here. If you are worried about Customs security, you really can't just expect to fully encrypt all partitions of both of your hard drives, leaving your system in an apparent non-operational state, without raising eyebrows in the event of a customs inspection. Therefore you will need to have your main Windows partition or hard drive in a non-encrypted, inspect-able condition, and you will need to encrypt the remainder of your hard drive(s) as partitions (you can only encrypt an entire hard drive in a single operation if Windows resides on that drive).

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I get how to set it up, but I want to be able to make my main OS hidden, and have a "fake" OS appear as my main & only OS, and for that I want to use Kali.

 

Not sure what "kali" is. But let me say, I've never been comfortable with TrueCrypt's hidden operating system approach. Reason is all of the limitations -- you can only have a limited amount of useable free space in the hidden operating system; you have to be very careful about writing to the non-hidden part of the partition holding the hidden operating system; etc.

IMO, your best bet would be to buy an external Hard drive large enough to back up both of your laptop hard drives (they're pretty cheap these days); then back up both drives to the external drive (encrypted or not, your choice), and plan to leave those back-ups at home. Then reformat your main hard drive and put a clean copy of Windows on that main hard drive. Then reformat your second laptop hard drive and encrypt all partitions on that drive. Then put whatever data you want to take on your trip onto that second (now encrypted) hard drive.

 

You must of heard of BackTrack, that was Kali's predecessor. Here are two articles about Kali:

http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/336420,backtrack-successor-kali-launched.aspx

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Kali-Linux-arrives-as-enterprise-ready-version-of-BackTrack-1822241.html

I have an external 1TB drive, it comes with me when I travel...usually to Montreal, because it has movies, etc. on it. I do need to get a bigger drive though.

 

I finally did figure out you were talking about Kali Linux (I may be slow but I'm persistent <grin>).

Believe me on this; if you can set up and run Kali Linux, you can run TrueCrypt in your sleep.

Just be sure to make backups of all of your stuff before you start. Accidents are rare but they do happen; and having ready-to-restore backups raises the comfort level of working with TrueCrypt tremendously.

The hidden operating system is not difficult to set up if you want to try it. I've done it a couple of times. I just never got comfortable with it because of the limitations I mentioned earlier. Quite possibly you may like it better than I did -- seems that there ought to be something worthwhile there since the TC developers put a lot of time and effort into setting it up; and various forums indicate that people do use it.

There are also various alternative approaches you might use -- one thought; put a 'vanilla' operating system into the first partition on your first hard drive; then put a full back up of your original operating system, and a full back up of the 'vanilla' operating system, into an encrypted second partition on that same drive -- or store these two backups in an encrypted partition on your second hard drive. Once you get past Customs just restore the original operating system from the backup. Then when it's time to go back home, delete the original operating system and restore the 'vanilla' operating system from it's backup.

There are of course numerous other approaches...

Let us know how things turn out.

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