Attack on Windows BitLocker

Fraunhofer SIT has presented a method for discovering the BitLocker drive encryption PIN under Windows. The method even works where TPM is used to protect the boot process. The trick? An attacker with access to the target computer simply boots from a USB flash drive and replaces the BitLocker bootloader with a substitute bootloader which mimics the BitLocker PIN query process but saves the PINs entered by the user to disk in unencrypted form.

Although the BitLocker boot process carries out an integrity check on the system, and thereby the Windows installation, it does not check the bootloader itself – not that the actual attack described even gets as far as the Windows boot process. Consequently, according to the Fraunhofer SIT report, even if a Trusted Computing Module (TPM) is fitted, it fails to protect against such an attack.

Link – http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Attack-on-Windows-BitLocker-877894.html

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