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How does Veracrypt work? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 4 days ago by starlight@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I understand that if you use Veracrypt on a USB drive, unless you know the password or passphrase, you cannot access the contents of the drive. The part that is throwing me off is, do you need to have Veracrypt installed on a computer to unlock the drive? Otherwsie, you cannot access it, correct? I ask because if I wanted to access the drive on a computer that does not have Veracrypt installed, it won't work, right? If that all wrong, please kindly explain to me how it works.

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[–] groet@feddit.org 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Why does OP have a stick with encrypted data if they do not care about its security?

Yes, maybe its just the porn collection that they don't want others to see, but maybe its actually important stuff.

I think it is important to inform people about the ways their security can be circumvented and if somebody gives security advice its important to inform people if that advice contains flaws.

OP should know about the potential risks and then decide themselves if that is acceptable to them.

And when talking about encryption, people often forget, that the best way to break it is to never attack the encryption, but attack the way people interact with the unencrypted data.

OP should know about the dangers of decrypting their USB with software that could be manipulated.

Is all that overkill in 95% of cases? Probably? Do we know OP isn't in the 5% where it matters? No.

Maybe they want to hide something from someone in their household who has frequent access to the USB stick. Maybe they are a journalist that might get searched by police/airport security ... we do not know and we shouldn't make assumptions about their threat model.

That's why I started the comment with "reasonable approach"

[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

i dont disagree, but if you don't mention stuff like threat model to n00bs they end up thinking they need to only communicate telepathically in order to not get spied on. every attack is possible, just not for every threat model, for example a very sophisticated js attack wouldnt be used on the wild, but more likely targetted on a specific individual because once it's known it's fixed and you can't use it. it's worthy so you use it on a worthy individual.