[cbsks]

Wow. SubC’s software engineering needs some work. They thought the camera’s file system was unencrypted, when it was encrypted. They didn’t know where the keys were to decrypt it. It turned out the key was written unencrypted to a UFS storage device. There was a file written to /mnt/nas/Stills, which indicates that the camera was to writing to a remote file system that wasn’t mounted.

[userbinator]

They thought the camera’s file system was unencrypted, when it was encrypted.

Unfortunately this situation is likely to get more common in the future as the "security" crowd keep pushing for encryption-by-default with no regard to whether the user wants or is even aware of it.

Encryption is always a tradeoff; it trades the possibility of unauthorised access with the possibility of even the owner losing access permanently. IMHO this tradeoff needs careful consideration and not blind application.

[jiggawatts]

This is why I always shake my head when the Reddit armchair security experts say "The data wasn't even encrypted!? Amateur hour!" in response to some PII leak.

Sure, sure buddy, I'll encrypt all of my PII data so nobody can access it... including the web application server.

Okay, fine, I'll decrypt it on the fly with a key in some API server... now the web server had unencrypted access to it, which sounds bad, but that's literally the only way that it can process and serve the data to users in a meaningful way! Now if someone hacks the web app server -- the common scenario -- then the attacker has unencrypted access!

I can encrypt the database, but at what layer? Storage? Cloud storage is already encrypted! Backups? Yeah, sure, but then what happens in a disaster? Who's got the keys? Are they contactable at 3am?

Etc, etc...

It's not only not as simple as ticking an "encrypted: yes" checkbox, it's maximally difficult, with a very direct tradeoff between accessibility and protection. The sole purpose of encrypting data is to prevent access!

[londons_explore]

I like the approach of mega.nz...

Server stores encrypted blobs. Server doesn't have the keys.

  Entire application is on the client, and just downloads and decrypts what it needs.

Obviously your entire application stack needs to be developed with that approach in mind, and some things like 'make a hyperlink to share this' get much more complex.

[dh2022]

Re: encrypting data that would be served via web server: why would anyone bother to encrypt data meant to be shared externally worldwide? It makes no sense to begin with…

[Terr_]

Nah bro, you just gotta use homomorphic encryption! /s

That said, encryption at rest is still good in terms of theft or mis-disposal.

[UltraSane]

This has already happened to Windows users when BitLocker disk encryption is enabled by default and they do something that causes the encryption key to be lost.

You can have the key saved in your Microsoft account.

[userbinator]

You can have the key saved in your Microsoft account.

I find it very hard to believe that those who want their disk encrypted also want Microsoft to have the key.

[UltraSane]

Microsoft isn't going to release it without a warrant. But you have to trust their security not to leak it.

[paradox460]

Unless the JeDI contract is up for renewal

[UltraSane]

What does that have to do with bitlocker?

[londons_explore]

> They thought the camera’s file system was unencrypted, when it was encrypted.

Willing to bet plenty of hn readers are unaware of encryption going on at lower layers of the tech stack than they're aware of.

For example most hard drives encrypt all data, even when not commanded to, as a way to do 'data whitening' (ie making sure there are even numbers of 0's and 1's in the data stream and not some pattern which might throw off tracking.)

The encryption key is simply stored elsewhere in the drive - or nvram or in the firmware.

But it means if you extract the physical magnetic surface and read it with the right microscope, you might well find the data encrypted with no available key.

[themafia]

Scrambling and encryption are two different things. Scrambling is very easy to do at line rates. Encryption not so much.

Ethernet is a good example. It has the same problem where long strings of 0's or 1's can cause clock recovery problems. The solution as clock rates have increased is to just run all the data through a scrambler driven by a simple Linear Feedback Shifter.

[kasabali]

If you're talking about SED feature, no, it isn't widespread since it's regarded as an "enterprise" feature and only available in minority of drives (regardless of HDD or SSD). Client or OEM variants of same drives (otherwise identical) lack SED option most of the time and doesn't encrypt data by default.

[londons_explore]

The hardware is still there - they don't make a new asic for the consumer version

[kasabali]

doesn't mean it's active.

[Nextgrid]

"Active" with those systems just means the encryption key is now user-supplied instead of being stored on the controller/drive. The actual encryption is always active; which makes sense, if anything it means you have one less configuration to test.

[kasabali]

If I learned one thing about SSD firmwares/controllers it's to be sure of nothing. Especially when the market is flooded with cheap controllers that can barely keep up with line speeds I'm very much doubtful that they're unconditionally encrypting at rest data.

[ryan-ca]

To my knowledge, encoding avoids runs to avoid desynchronization in a way that isn’t encrypted.

[rocqua]

This is line coding, often used on wired connections. But reading a hard drive trace isn't quite a wired connection, so the trade-offs are different.

Most notably with line coding when using positive and negative voltages it is quite important for the average voltage to be zero to avoid building up a charge difference. Whitening can often be used if the downside to an imbalance or long runs is much lower. Notably in RF this is often about avoid harmonics with a little bit of symbol timing advantage thrown in.

Whitening doesn't really require encryption though. Weak cypher streams xored into the data work fine. Even a repeated 256 bit string is quite alright.

Whitening using any non trivial encryption key seems weird to me. AES with a key equal to the current offset in ECB mode already feels over-engineerd.

[londons_explore]

> Whitening using any non trivial encryption key seems weird to me.

It's because there was an era when drives were expected to be able to do 'hardware' encryption with a user provided key, so reusing that hardware to also do whitening even if the user didn't provide a key was very convenient.

Plus you get all the other benefits - ie. a single scsi command can 'secure erase' the whole disk in milliseconds by simply changing the stored key.

[londons_explore]

This used to be done, but since ~2000, disks were expected to support on-device encryption, and by making encryption always-on no encoding is needed.