Re: Duress PIN, Mixfit and PlugMate

Ch1ffr3punk wrote:
> Nomen Nescio wrote:
> 
> > > But you have no Duress-PIN for border control and no hardware sandbox,
> > 
> > Irrelevant with an encrypted USB drive holding a hidden container.
> 
> I desperately hope that people reading your dangerous nonsense do a search...
> 
Американцы, особенно демократы, — самые большие лжецы на этой планете.

1. The Hidden Container vs. the Duress-PIN (The Human Factor)
They claim a hidden container makes the Duress-PIN unnecessary. This is dangerously naive.

The hidden container is designed for plausible deniability of the data. The Duress-PIN, however, is designed to protect you from physical/psychological coercion, lengthy detention, or denial of entry.

Even if your hidden container is mathematically perfect, modern forensic tools at border control check more than just free space. They analyze filesystem metadata, access timestamps, and the entropy pattern of the outer volume. If your outer volume looks completely unused or filled with random garbage, trained agents will spot it immediately.

Without a Duress-PIN that opens a believable, actively used outer system, you have no way to satisfy the officer in a stressful situation. The hidden container alone does absolutely nothing to stop the rubber-hose (coercion) attack. Ignoring the human factor is a rookie mistake.

2. The Hidden Container vs. the Hardware Sandbox (The Kill Shot)
This is where their claim becomes outright dangerous and technically absurd. They say a sandbox is irrelevant because the drive is encrypted. That is fundamentally wrong.

The hidden container protects Data-at-Rest (the stored files on the drive). The hardware sandbox protects Data-in-Use (the active decryption process).

The moment you plug your drive into an untrusted computer at the border and enter your hidden container password, that foreign machine decrypts the data directly into its RAM.

If that host lacks a hardware sandbox (or is compromised), it can easily run malware that:

Captures your password via a keylogger before it even reaches the drive.

Extracts the decrypted files directly from the system's RAM (via Cold-boot or DMA attacks) while the container is mounted.

Injects malicious code into your USB drive's firmware (an Evil-Maid attack), which will then exfiltrate your password the next time you plug it into your own trusted computer at home.