Security of Mac Keychain, File Vault

[Greg Thompson]

On Oct 24, 2009, at 5:31 PM, Jerry Leichter wrote:

> The article at http://www.net-security.org/article.php?id=1322  
> claims that both are easily broken.  I haven't been able to find any  
> public analyses of Keychain, even though the software is open-source  
> so it's relatively easy to check.  I ran across an analysis of File  
> Vault not long ago which pointed out some fairly minor nits, but  
> basically claimed it did what it set out to do.

The white paper for Mac Marshal (http://macmarshal.atc-nycorp.com/mac/MacMarshal_WhitePaper_102.pdf 
) leads me to believe that the so-called vulnerability in File Vault  
is that the encryption is based on the user's chosen login password:

"So, FileVault is not as secure as simple 128-bit AES. Any means of  
obtaining the user’s login password or the FileVault Master recovery  
keychain will allow access to the FileVault image."

Does this surprise anyone?

		-Greg
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