Behind the scenes with FileVault

FileVault is the Home directory encryption feature of OS X (introduced in Pather) which A le bills as offering, 'Eternal Protection.' A le ha 't produced much documentation on FileVault, I su ose in hopes that no one would find an easy way to hack it. A presentation at the < an cla ="r :item">23rd Chaos Computing Congre focused on FileVault, how it works, and po ible vulnerabilities.

Luckily for us, the general conclusion is that FileVault is a good way to secure your drive, if used correctly. FileVault does not encrypt the contents of system memory by default in Tiger (It doe 't do it at all in Panther) and it does not, by design, encrypt anything outside of a user's home directory.

There are a few po ible attack vectors, but the easiest seems to be a good old brute force Dictionary attack on the 'Master Pa word' that you must set when enabling FileVault. Remember, if your pa word is weak all the encryption in the world won't help you.

[via MacSlash]