How secure is the Secure Zone?

Can the Secure Zone be compromised by a virus or Trojan? Can the secure zone be deleted by a windows program?

With the exception of a hard drive failure, I guess what I'm asking is how secure is the secure zone?

Thanks in advance.

 

The secure zone is not visible to windows so no windows program can delete it. Acronis say that it also protects from virus and trojan.

 

Hello COGreyWolf,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

Acronis Secure Zone is not available for Windows therefore for all applications you may run. These applications include viruses and trojans for they are launched in the same way as an ordinary application. The only thing that can damage Acronis Secure Zone is your disk failure.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Thank you for the prompt reply. I was under the impression that a Virus could gelete partitions, the master boot record and make the hard drive totally inaccessible?

 

Disk Management in Windows XP can see and delete the Secure Zone. I just removed it by deleting the partition. Created an image of it prior and reloading it now.

 

Hello COGreyWolf,

There are very few viruses that delete partitions rather than files. Files in Acronis Secure Zone are not available for viruses.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Is there a way to lock the secure zone so that nothing other than a hardaware failure would effect it?

Thanks

 

Hello COGreyWolf,

The best way to lock it is to hide it for operating system. It is already done in Acronis True Image. I cannot imagine more powerful way to keep Acronis Secure Zone save.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

or fdisk, parted and tools like that for that matter. But in all fairness, you really have to be deliberate about it to delete the SZ on a drive.

 

Hi - Unless someone can tell us how that Secure Zone (SZ) is implemented, it is impossible to say how secure it is.

I have TI-6 so I might be wrong, but my guess is that the SZ is an ordinary partition, but with a unusual (and to Windows unknown) partition type. Since Windows silently ignores unknown partition types (e.g. if you have an *nix partion), any data in the partition is safe.

But - as other have noted - this does not mean that the partition itself is safe. Since the partition table is accessible by Windows, a virus/trojan can either

• Bluntly delete the SZ,
  
  or
  .
• It can be really sneaky and 1) change the partition type into something that Windows will recognize, 2) mount it, 3) change/delete files, 4) unmount, and 5) change the partition type back to whatever it was before.
  
  Note: Option 2 will not work if the data (that is, the filesystem) in the SZ is encrypted/encoded in some special way, e.g. with a password.

 

Hello,

Acronis "Secure Zone" is not meant to be Acronis "Impossible to attack Zone".
the secure zone is simply safer than a usual partition.

A classic partition can be seen by any malware, and the data on it can be altered or deleted easily, even by the dumbest sypware.
Also, if sudenly Windows gets crazy and BSOD (as it happens) the data it has access to can be corrupted in some cases.

By hiding the partition where your backups are stored, it prevents them to be seen by malwares, or to be altered accidentally by the OS.

It's simply safer (secure, not unbreakable).

Regards,
gwkeb.