Decrypting flash drive

[catlow]

Hi guys

I have a flash drive that wass given to me, and was told that it is encrypted and that i have to decrypt it. From what I can see it was encrypted with TrueCrypt. It's not just a file thats encrypted it the actual partition. According to TrueCrypt's website their encryption is uncrackable. I have googled and download a number of tools but no luck. Is there any advice you guys can give me? Thanks.

[Archangel-Amael]

Here are two pieces of advice, take them as you will.
1. Ask the person who gave it to you for the password.
2. Format it and forget about it.

[godcronos]

Doesn't truecrypt have a recovery disk/utility for this? I am sure in not crackable, but maybe you can recover it. I did it for one of my hard drives a long time ago. Check their website for a way to recover the partition. Google : "Truecrypt password recovery". Read read read!
Good luck!

[Sublime865]

Here are two pieces of advice, take them as you will.
1. Ask the person who gave it to you for the password.
2. Format it and forget about it.

Is that how all the competitions are won with BackTrack?

"crack this network!" "sure, can I have the password" "Oh, uh, 1 2 3 4 5 of course" "perfect, I cracked your network!!!"

Granted, I'm still learning, but this is a field I *want* to get into. I'm in the playing with backtrack and cracking my own network phase right now, but Offensive Security offers some nice training and certs that are going to help me down the road.

I can see where this would be handy though, I hosed an entire drive once when I lost my thumbdrive (IronKey) with my truecrypt hash file (well, long story short I was doing concrete work and the thumbdrive fell out of my pocket, into the concrete, and I'm not about to tear up the foundation to my parents house...). Anyway, I think that is a little different than just not knowing the password but still, I can understand the need to crack into it.

[SQLWin]

Doesn't truecrypt have a recovery disk/utility for this? I am sure in not crackable, but maybe you can recover it. I did it for one of my hard drives a long time ago. Check their website for a way to recover the partition. Google : "Truecrypt password recovery". Read read read!
Good luck!

No, you cannot "recover" it.

What good is encryption if any random person can pick up the disk and "recover" it?

Truecrypt utilizes top-grade encryption. The only viable attacks are dictionary attacks against the passphrase. There are tools out there to do this, but they are very slow, so it must be a very simple password.

Keyspace or other attacks against such a strong encryption is not practical, nor possible.

The best way to access a truecrypt partition that is strongly encrypted is to install a keylogger on the computer of the user who created the encryption and try to capture other passwords they type. Sometimes they will re-use passwords, or they will be a formula that you might guess.

Otherwise, you're out of luck.

[Archangel-Amael]

Is that how all the competitions are won with BackTrack?
"crack this network!" "sure, can I have the password" "Oh, uh, 1 2 3 4 5 of course" "perfect, I cracked your network!!!"

That is called social-engineering actually.
Further I am pretty sure I summed this thread up in the first response. For those in doubt take a look at how true crypt works.

[Barry]

That is called social-engineering actually.
Further I am pretty sure I summed this thread up in the first response. For those in doubt take a look at how true crypt works.

Or, ask Beakmyn. He knows all about not creating that truecrypt recovery cd.

[Archangel-Amael]

Or, ask Beakmyn. He knows all about not creating that truecrypt recovery cd.

I did that too, back in the day, lost about 10 gigs of data for teaching classes, when I was in the service.
Didn't make that mistake twice.

[ondrovic]

here is an interesting article on TrueCrypt

FBI hackers fail to crack TrueCrypt - Techworld.com

[Barry]

I did that too, back in the day, lost about 10 gigs of data for teaching classes, when I was in the service.
Didn't make that mistake twice.

He wiped out his laptop at Shmoocon.