FEWL.NET

I know most of my blogging deals with stuff that goes on around the FDNF, but I thought I’d share some of my techy side with everyone.

Working as an Information Assurance Manager, I routinely come across personal thumb-drives that have been mistakenly left in workstations or lost. When these thumb-drives are turned in, we perform virus scans and then enumerate the files and folders on them for a number of reasons. One to identify the owner and another to ensure it’s not storing any unauthorized information.

One thing that always blows my mind is how much personal information people leave on their thumb-drives, without any type of security to keep prying eyes out. I’ve seen people’s e-mail archives, personal budgets, password lists, and even nudie pictures of themselves or their significant others…not always pretty. There’s nothing wrong with using a portable thumb-drive as a storage device for personal information, but in this day and age, when identity theft is as common as any other crime, it is absolutely crucial that you secure this information.

This step-by-step tutorial will show you how to use the free and open-source TrueCrypt encryption software, to create an encrypted security container (think of it as an encrypted folder) on your thumb-drive, which will contain all your personal and privates files, and can only be accessed by knowing the password you’ve chosen. For my example, I have a 4GB Kingston Data Traveler USB 2.0 thumb-drive being encrypted on a Windows XP machine. Any thumb-drive should work, and using TrueCrypt on other operating systems, like Mac or Linux shouldn’t be pretty similar.

To begin, download and install the TrueCrypt software. You will be required to reboot after the installation is complete. Do so, and then insert your thumb-drive after Windows finished booting. Double click the TrueCrypt icon on your Desktop, or run the program from the Start menu > Program Files > TrueCrypt menu.

Once the TrueCrypt window loads, click the “Create Volume” button.

When selecting the how we want to create the volume, we will select the “Create a file container” option. A file container is an encrypted file that will sit on the thumb-drive, and will “hold” all the information we wish to keep secure. The reason we select this option, instead of a fully-encrypted thumb-drive, is because 4GB is a lot of space, and I want to still be able to use the drive to quickly move files, that aren’t personal and don’t need to be secured, between different computers. Select the first option, and then click the “Next >” button.

The next window asks us to select the volume type. Since we’re not spies, the “hidden volume” is unnecessary. Select the default “Standard TrueCrypt volume” and click the “Next >” button.

The next window asks us where we would like to store our encrypted volume. Click the “Select File…” button.

Browse to the thumb-drive we want to store our personal information on, name the file anything you’d like, and then click the “Save” button.

Back at the volume location window, click the “Next >” button.

The next window asks us to select our encryption type. The defaults of “AES” and “RIPEMD-160” offer enough protection for our information, so just click the “Next >” button.

The next window asks use to specify our volume size. Remember I’m using a 4GB thumb-drive. Since I only want to use a small portion of the thumb-drive to encrypt private information, I select 1000MB for my volume size. When finished, click the “Next >” button.

The next window asks us to select a password. No amount of encryption is going to keep anything private if you use choose a lousy password to decrypt it. This password should be as complex as the information on your drive is important. You will need to enter this password whenever you want to access your encrypted files, so make sure it’s something you can remember.

The next window asks us to select different options for the way we want the volume to be formatted. The filesystem and cluster defaults should be sufficient, so unless you know what NTFS, leave the defaults. Before you click format button, randomly move your mouse pointer within the TrueCrypt program window. Your random mouse movements enable TrueCrypt to generate stronger encryption keys, ensuring your information stays as secure as possible. Do this for a few seconds, and then click the “Format” button.

TrueCrypt will take about a minute or so, depending on the size of your drive, to format the volume.

When formatting is complete, you’ll receive an alert message indicating the operation completed successfully. Click the “Ok” button to acknowledge.

The final window confirms the creation of our volume and asks us if we’d like to create another. At this point we’re finished, so click the “Exit” button.

Accessing our Encrypted Volume.
Now that we’ve created an encrypted volume, we will populate it with files that we wish to remain private. In my example, I have a text file with my credit card number that I want to store on my encrypted volume.

To access the volume, we first have to “mount” it. In the TrueCrypt main program window, click the “Select File…” button.

Navigate to the thumb-drive, and select the volume we previously created. Click the “Open” button.

Back at the main program window, we now have the location of our encrypted volume. To open, click the “Mount” button.

Next, you’ll be prompted to enter the password you created to secure your volume. Enter it and click the “OK” button.

If the password is correct, you will now see that our encrypted volume is mounted. In my example, it shows that my volume is mounted as the “G:” hard drive. To start working with it, you can either navigate to the G:\ drive in “My Computer,” or just right mouse click on the drive in TrueCrypt and select “Open.”

Now that I’m in my encrypted volume, currently mounted as the “G:” drive, I can save whatever files that I want to keep private. In my example, a text file with my credit card number.

When I’m finished working with the volume, I can once again encrypt it by “dismounting” the volume. From the main TrueCrypt program window, right mouse click on the mounted drive, and select “dismount.”

Now, if you were to lose your thumb-drive, you wouldn’t have to worry about whoever finds it being able to access your private personal information. When they access the thumb-drive from their computer, all they’ll be able to see is the encrypted volume, and whatever other non-personal files you had on the thumb-drive.

Some words of warning.
Personal encryption is not authorized on Department of Defense workstations, so the drive you’ve secured should not be the same one you use at work. Talk to your command Information Assurance Manager should you have any questions on how to safeguard Personally Identifying Information (PII) or FOUO information using officially sanction mechanisms.

There is no way to get into an encrypted volume if you’ve forgotten your password. Always ensure you’re using a strong and hard to guess password, but try not to go overboard. It’s a good idea to keep a written copy of it somewhere in a box at home, should you forget it.

Be aware of the perception about using encryption. While it is perfectly legal to use encryption, and you have every right to keep your information private, there are those out there who believe people who use encryption have something to hide. I was once being interviewed by a Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) agent about a work-related matter when the topic of disk encryption came up. His exact words were “the only people who really use encryption are people like us, NCIS, and sophisticated pedophiles.” He was absolutely incorrect in this unfair assumption, so be mindful of what others may think.