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65-527: VeraCrypt is a fork of the discontinued TrueCrypt project. It was initially released on 22 June 2013. Many security improvements have been implemented and concerns within the TrueCrypt code audits have been addressed. VeraCrypt includes optimizations to the original cryptographic hash functions and ciphers, which boost performance on modern CPUs . VeraCrypt employs AES , Serpent , Twofish , Camellia , and Kuznyechik as ciphers . Version 1.19 stopped using

130-863: A keyboard , typically covertly, so that a person using the keyboard is unaware that their actions are being monitored. Data can then be retrieved by the person operating the logging program. A keystroke recorder or keylogger can be either software or hardware . While the programs themselves are legal, with many designed to allow employers to oversee the use of their computers, keyloggers are most often used for stealing passwords and other confidential information . Keystroke logging can also be utilized to monitor activities of children in schools or at home and by law enforcement officials to investigate malicious usage. Keylogging can also be used to study keystroke dynamics or human-computer interaction . Numerous keylogging methods exist, ranging from hardware and software -based approaches to acoustic cryptanalysis. In

195-448: A word processor for IBM PC compatible machines and Macintosh computers. Generally, such internal forks will concentrate on having the same look, feel, data format, and behavior between platforms so that a user familiar with one can also be productive or share documents generated on the other. This is almost always an economic decision to generate a greater market share and thus pay back the associated extra development costs created by

260-548: A branch "forks off" a version of the program. The term was in use on Usenet by 1983 for the process of creating a subgroup to move topics of discussion to. "Fork" is not known to have been used in the sense of a community schism during the origins of Lucid Emacs (now XEmacs ) (1991) or the Berkeley Software Distributions (BSDs) (1993–1994); Russ Nelson used the term "shattering" for this sort of fork in 1993, attributing it to John Gilmore . However, "fork"

325-432: A computer can simply wait for the victim to enter their credentials before performing unauthorized transactions on their behalf while their session is active. Another common way to protect access codes from being stolen by keystroke loggers is by asking users to provide a few randomly selected characters from their authentication code. For example, they might be asked to enter the 2nd, 5th, and 8th characters. Even if someone

390-445: A deniable password snatching attack in which the keystroke logging trojan is installed using a virus or worm . An attacker who is caught with the virus or worm can claim to be a victim. The cryptotrojan asymmetrically encrypts the pilfered login/password pairs using the public key of the trojan author and covertly broadcasts the resulting ciphertext . They mentioned that the ciphertext can be steganographically encoded and posted to

455-529: A fork, with examples: Distributed revision control (DVCS) tools have popularised a less emotive use of the term "fork", blurring the distinction with "branch". With a DVCS such as Mercurial or Git , the normal way to contribute to a project, is to first create a personal branch of the repository, independent of the main repository, and later seek to have your changes integrated with it. Sites such as GitHub , Bitbucket and Launchpad provide free DVCS hosting expressly supporting independent branches, such that

520-434: A general rule, anti-spyware applications with higher privileges will defeat keyloggers with lower privileges. For example, a hook-based anti-spyware application cannot defeat a kernel-based keylogger (as the keylogger will receive the keystroke messages before the anti-spyware application), but it could potentially defeat hook- and API-based keyloggers. Network monitors (also known as reverse-firewalls) can be used to alert

585-446: A keylogger can be considered a legitimate piece of software. Rebooting the computer using a Live CD or write-protected Live USB is a possible countermeasure against software keyloggers if the CD is clean of malware and the operating system contained on it is secured and fully patched so that it cannot be infected as soon as it is started. Booting a different operating system does not impact

650-406: A larger key space to attack if they choose to execute a brute-force attack . Another very similar technique uses the fact that any selected text portion is replaced by the next key typed. e.g., if the password is "secret", one could type "s", then some dummy keys "asdf". These dummy characters could then be selected with the mouse, and the next character from the password "e" typed, which replaces

715-845: A motivating factor in restricting access to /dev/kmem on Unix systems. The user-mode program operated by locating and dumping character lists (clients) as they were assembled in the Unix kernel. In the 1970s, spies installed keystroke loggers in the US Embassy and Consulate buildings in Moscow . They installed the bugs in Selectric II and Selectric III electric typewriters. Soviet embassies used manual typewriters, rather than electric typewriters, for classified information —apparently because they are immune to such bugs. As of 2013, Russian special services still use typewriters. A software-based keylogger

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780-540: A proprietary grant in the form of a Contributor License Agreement .) Examples include macOS (based on the proprietary NeXTSTEP and the open source FreeBSD ), Cedega and CrossOver (proprietary forks of Wine , though CrossOver tracks Wine and contributes considerably), EnterpriseDB (a fork of PostgreSQL , adding Oracle compatibility features ), Supported PostgreSQL with their proprietary ESM storage system, and Netezza's proprietary highly scalable derivative of PostgreSQL. Some of these vendors contribute back changes to

845-718: A public bulletin board such as Usenet . In 2000, the FBI used FlashCrest iSpy to obtain the PGP passphrase of Nicodemo Scarfo, Jr. , son of mob boss Nicodemo Scarfo . Also in 2000, the FBI lured two suspected Russian cybercriminals to the US in an elaborate ruse, and captured their usernames and passwords with a keylogger that was covertly installed on a machine that they used to access their computers in Russia . The FBI then used these credentials to gain access to

910-428: A so-called supply chain attack where an attacker substitutes the card reader/PIN entry hardware for one which records the user's PIN. Most on-screen keyboards (such as the on-screen keyboard that comes with Windows XP ) send normal keyboard event messages to the external target program to type text. Software key loggers can log these typed characters sent from one program to another. Keystroke interference software

975-488: A weakness in the VeraCrypt software. The FBI also denied having a backdoor within the VeraCrypt software. It was later found that another suspect had educated the defendant into using encryption to hide his photos and videos of child pornography. Because the defendant had admitted to having child pornography on the drive as a backup anyways and chat logs relating to the other suspect educating the defendant on how to use VeraCrypt,

1040-410: Is XTS . It generates the header key and the secondary header key (XTS mode) using PBKDF2 with a 512- bit salt . By default they go through 200,000 to 500,000 iterations, depending on the underlying hash function used and whether it is system or non-system encryption. The user can customize it to start as low as 2,048 and 16,000 respectively. QuarksLab conducted an audit of version 1.18 on behalf of

1105-465: Is a basic premise of a secure system. Some kinds of malware are designed to log keystrokes , including typed passwords, that may then be sent to the attacker over the Internet or saved to an unencrypted local drive from which the attacker might be able to read it later, when they gain physical access to the computer. VeraCrypt does not take advantage of Trusted Platform Module (TPM). VeraCrypt FAQ repeats

1170-747: Is a computer program designed to record any input from the keyboard. Keyloggers are used in IT organizations to troubleshoot technical problems with computers and business networks. Families and businesspeople use keyloggers legally to monitor network usage without their users' direct knowledge. Microsoft publicly stated that Windows 10 has a built-in keylogger in its final version "to improve typing and writing services". However, malicious individuals can use keyloggers on public computers to steal passwords or credit card information. Most keyloggers are not stopped by HTTPS encryption because that only protects data in transit between computers; software-based keyloggers run on

1235-489: Is a form of schism . Grounds for forking are varying user preferences and stagnated or discontinued development of the original software. Free and open-source software is that which, by definition, may be forked from the original development team without prior permission, and without violating copyright law. However, licensed forks of proprietary software ( e.g. Unix ) also happen. The word "fork" has been used to mean "to divide in branches, go separate ways" as early as

1300-494: Is a piece of software specifically designed to detect keyloggers on a computer, typically comparing all files in the computer against a database of keyloggers, looking for similarities which might indicate the presence of a hidden keylogger. As anti-keyloggers have been designed specifically to detect keyloggers, they have the potential to be more effective than conventional antivirus software; some antivirus software do not consider keyloggers to be malware, as under some circumstances

1365-580: Is also available. These programs attempt to trick keyloggers by introducing random keystrokes, although this simply results in the keylogger recording more information than it needs to. An attacker has the task of extracting the keystrokes of interest—the security of this mechanism, specifically how well it stands up to cryptanalysis , is unclear. Similar to on-screen keyboards, speech-to-text conversion software can also be used against keyloggers, since there are no typing or mouse movements involved. The weakest point of using voice-recognition software may be how

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1430-459: Is cut (or longer if the temperature is lowered). Even if there is some degradation in the memory contents, various algorithms may be able to recover the keys. This method, known as a cold boot attack (which would apply in particular to a notebook computer obtained while in power-on, suspended, or screen-locked mode), was successfully used to attack a file system protected by TrueCrypt versions 4.3a and 5.0a in 2008. With version 1.24, VeraCrypt added

1495-401: Is entirely redundant. It is true that after achieving either unrestricted physical access or administrative privileges, it is only a matter of time before other security measures in place are bypassed. However, stopping an attacker in possession of administrative privileges has never been one of the goals of TPM. (See Trusted Platform Module § Uses for details.) TPM might, however, reduce

1560-445: Is installing a covert keystroke logger without getting caught and downloading data that has been logged without being traced. An attacker that manually connects to a host machine to download logged keystrokes risks being traced. A trojan that sends keylogged data to a fixed e-mail address or IP address risks exposing the attacker. Researchers Adam Young and Moti Yung discussed several methods of sending keystroke logging. They presented

1625-418: Is sometimes made when the forked software is designed to be a drop-in replacement for the original project, e.g. MariaDB for MySQL or LibreOffice for OpenOffice.org . The BSD licenses permit forks to become proprietary software, and copyleft proponents say that commercial incentives thus make proprietisation almost inevitable. (Copyleft licenses can, however, be circumvented via dual-licensing with

1690-464: Is used legitimately as a suitable research instrument in several writing contexts. These include studies on cognitive writing processes, which include Keystroke logging can be used to research writing, specifically. It can also be integrated into educational domains for second language learning, programming skills, and typing skills. Software keyloggers may be augmented with features that capture user information without relying on keyboard key presses as

1755-417: Is watching the user or using a keystroke logger, they would only get a few characters from the code without knowing their positions. Use of smart cards or other security tokens may improve security against replay attacks in the face of a successful keylogging attack, as accessing protected information would require both the (hardware) security token as well as the appropriate password/passphrase. Knowing

1820-577: The AES-NI instruction set, VeraCrypt supports hardware-accelerated AES to further improve performance. On 64-bit CPUs VeraCrypt uses optimized assembly implementation of Twofish, Serpent, and Camellia. VeraCrypt was forked from the since-discontinued TrueCrypt project in 2013, and originally contained mostly TrueCrypt code released under the TrueCrypt License 3.0. In the years since, more and more of VeraCrypt's code has been rewritten and released under

1885-468: The Magma cipher in response to a security audit. For additional security, ten different combinations of cascaded algorithms are available: The cryptographic hash functions available for use in VeraCrypt are BLAKE2s-256 , SHA-256 , SHA-512 , Streebog and Whirlpool . VeraCrypt used to have support for RIPEMD-160 but it has since been removed in version 1.26. VeraCrypt's block cipher mode of operation

1950-431: The 14th century. In the software environment, the word evokes the fork system call, which causes a running process to split itself into two (almost) identical copies that (typically) diverge to perform different tasks. In the context of software development, "fork" was used in the sense of creating a revision control " branch " by Eric Allman as early as 1980, in the context of Source Code Control System : Creating

2015-519: The Noosphere , stated that "The most important characteristic of a fork is that it spawns competing projects that cannot later exchange code, splitting the potential developer community". He notes in the Jargon File : Forking is considered a Bad Thing—not merely because it implies a lot of wasted effort in the future, but because forks tend to be accompanied by a great deal of strife and acrimony between

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2080-516: The Open Source Technology Improvement Fund (OSTIF), which took 32 man-days . The auditor published the results on 17 October 2016. On the same day, IDRIX released version 1.19, which resolved major vulnerabilities identified in the audit. Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT) conducted another audit in 2020, following a request by Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), and published

2145-421: The affected user's computer, reading keyboard inputs directly as the user types. From a technical perspective, there are several categories: Since 2006, keystroke logging has been an established research method for the study of writing processes. Different programs have been developed to collect online process data of writing activities, including Inputlog , Scriptlog, Translog and GGXLog. Keystroke logging

2210-428: The community project, while some keep their changes as their own competitive advantages. In proprietary software , the copyright is usually held by the employing entity, not by the individual software developers. Proprietary code is thus more commonly forked when the owner needs to develop two or more versions, such as a windowed version and a command line version, or versions for differing operating systems, such as

2275-474: The encrypted drive, the prosecution applied to force the defendant to give away the password under the foregone conclusion doctrine in the All Writs Act . In a search of a Californian defendant's apartment for accessing child pornography, a VeraCrypt drive that was over 900 Gigabytes was found as an external hard drive. The FBI was called to assist local law enforcement, but the FBI claimed to not have found

2340-425: The foregone conclusion doctrine was used again. Fork (software development) In software engineering , a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct and separate piece of software. The term often implies not merely a development branch , but also a split in the developer community; as such, it

2405-399: The fork. A notable proprietary fork not of this kind is the many varieties of proprietary Unix —almost all derived from AT&T Unix under license and all called "Unix", but increasingly mutually incompatible. See Unix wars . Keystroke logging Keystroke logging , often referred to as keylogging or keyboard capturing , is the action of recording (logging) the keys struck on

2470-508: The former developers. VeraCrypt is considered to be free and open source by: VeraCrypt is considered to not be free and open source by: Most of these are due to Veracrypt and Truecrypt not having supported or endorsed licenses. For example, the FSF does not tolerate licenses that impose obligations on the end user for the execution of the software and therefore go against The Free Software Definition . Debian considers all software that does not meet

2535-432: The guidelines of its DFSG to be non-free. In US v. Burns, the defendant had three hard drives, the first being a system partition which was later found to contain caches of deleted child pornography and manuals for how to use VeraCrypt, with the second being encrypted, and the third having miscellaneous music files. Even though the defendant admitted to having child pornography on his second hard drive, he refused to give

2600-470: The help of many programs, a seemingly meaningless text can be expanded to a meaningful text and most of the time context-sensitively, e.g. "en.wikipedia.org" can be expanded when a web browser window has the focus. The biggest weakness of this technique is that these programs send their keystrokes directly to the target program. However, this can be overcome by using the 'alternating' technique described below , i.e. sending mouse clicks to non-responsive areas of

2665-445: The hidden volume deniability features may be compromised (e.g., by third-party software which may leak information through temporary files or via thumbnails) and possible ways to avoid this. VeraCrypt supports parallelized encryption for multi-core systems . On Microsoft Windows, pipelined read and write operations (a form of asynchronous processing) to reduce the performance hit of encryption and decryption. On processors supporting

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2730-506: The keystrokes, mouse actions, display, clipboard, etc. used on one computer will not subsequently help an attacker gain access to the protected resource. Some security tokens work as a type of hardware-assisted one-time password system, and others implement a cryptographic challenge–response authentication , which can improve security in a manner conceptually similar to one time passwords. Smartcard readers and their associated keypads for PIN entry may be vulnerable to keystroke logging through

2795-454: The larger group, or whoever controls the web site, will retain the full original name and the associated user community. Thus, there is a reputation penalty associated with forking. The relationship between the different teams can be cordial or very bitter. On the other hand, a friendly fork or a soft fork is a fork that does not intend to compete, but wants to eventually merge with the original. Eric S. Raymond , in his essay Homesteading

2860-581: The mid-1970s, the Soviet Union developed and deployed a hardware keylogger targeting typewriters . Termed the "selectric bug", it measured the movements of the print head of IBM Selectric typewriters via subtle influences on the regional magnetic field caused by the rotation and movements of the print head. An early keylogger was written by Perry Kivolowitz and posted to the Usenet newsgroup net.unix-wizards, net.sources on November 17, 1983. The posting seems to be

2925-402: The mouse while typing, causing the logged keystrokes to be in the wrong order e.g., by typing a password beginning with the last letter and then using the mouse to move the cursor for each subsequent letter. Lastly, someone can also use context menus to remove, cut, copy, and paste parts of the typed text without using the keyboard. An attacker who can capture only parts of a password will have

2990-599: The negative opinion of the original TrueCrypt developers verbatim. The TrueCrypt developers were of the opinion that the exclusive purpose of the TPM is "to protect against attacks that require the attacker to have administrator privileges, or physical access to the computer". The attacker who has physical or administrative access to a computer can circumvent TPM, e.g., by installing a hardware keystroke logger , by resetting TPM, or by capturing memory contents and retrieving TPM-issued keys. The condemning text goes so far as to claim that TPM

3055-466: The network. ( Transport Layer Security (TLS) reduces the risk that data in transit may be intercepted by network sniffers and proxy tools .) Using one-time passwords may prevent unauthorized access to an account which has had its login details exposed to an attacker via a keylogger, as each password is invalidated as soon as it is used. This solution may be useful for someone using a public computer. However, an attacker who has remote control over such

3120-399: The option of encrypting the in- RAM keys and passwords on x64 editions of Windows, with a CPU overhead of less than 10%, and the option of erasing all encryption keys from memory when a new device is connected. VeraCrypt documentation states that VeraCrypt is unable to secure data on a computer if an attacker physically accessed it and VeraCrypt is then used on the compromised computer by

3185-425: The password to the authorities. Despite searching for clues of previously used passwords on the first drive, and inquiries to the FBI about any weaknesses to the VeraCrypt software that could be used to access the drive partition, and brute-forcing the partition with the alphanumeric character set as potential passwords, the partition could not be accessed. Due to the defendant confessing to having child pornography on

3250-421: The permissive Apache License 2.0. The TrueCrypt license is generally considered to be source-available but not free and open source . The Apache license is universally considered to be free and open source. The mixed VeraCrypt license is widely but not universally considered to be free and open source. On 28 May 2014 TrueCrypt ceased development under unusual circumstances, and there exists no way to contact

3315-516: The results in October 2020. There are several kinds of attacks to which all software-based disk encryption is vulnerable. As with TrueCrypt, the VeraCrypt documentation instructs users to follow various security precautions to mitigate these attacks, several of which are detailed below. VeraCrypt stores its keys in RAM ; on some personal computers DRAM will maintain its contents for several seconds after power

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3380-659: The software sends the recognized text to target software after the user's speech has been processed. Many PDAs and lately tablet PCs can already convert pen (also called stylus) movements on their touchscreens to computer understandable text successfully. Mouse gestures use this principle by using mouse movements instead of a stylus. Mouse gesture programs convert these strokes to user-definable actions, such as typing text. Similarly, graphics tablets and light pens can be used to input these gestures, however, these are becoming less common. The same potential weakness of speech recognition applies to this technique as well. With

3445-400: The sole input. Some of these features include: Hardware-based keyloggers do not depend upon any software being installed as they exist at a hardware level in a computer system. Writing simple software applications for keylogging can be trivial, and like any nefarious computer program, can be distributed as a trojan horse or as part of a virus . What is not trivial for an attacker, however,

3510-437: The success rate of the cold boot attack described above. TPM is also known to be susceptible to SPI attacks. As with its predecessor TrueCrypt , VeraCrypt supports plausible deniability by allowing a single "hidden volume" to be created within another volume. The Windows versions of VeraCrypt can create and run a hidden encrypted operating system whose existence may be denied . The VeraCrypt documentation lists ways in which

3575-476: The successor groups over issues of legitimacy, succession, and design direction. There is serious social pressure against forking. As a result, major forks (such as the Gnu-Emacs / XEmacs split, the fissioning of the 386BSD group into three daughter projects, and the short-lived GCC/EGCS split) are rare enough that they are remembered individually in hacker folklore. David A. Wheeler notes four possible outcomes of

3640-838: The suspects' computers in Russia to obtain evidence to prosecute them. The effectiveness of countermeasures varies because keyloggers use a variety of techniques to capture data and the countermeasure needs to be effective against the particular data capture technique. In the case of Windows 10 keylogging by Microsoft, changing certain privacy settings may disable it. An on-screen keyboard will be effective against hardware keyloggers; transparency will defeat some—but not all—screen loggers. An anti-spyware application that can only disable hook-based keyloggers will be ineffective against kernel-based keyloggers. Keylogger program authors may be able to update their program's code to adapt to countermeasures that have proven effective against it. An anti-keylogger

3705-420: The target program, sending meaningless keys, sending another mouse click to the target area (e.g. password field) and switching back-and-forth. Alternating between typing the login credentials and typing characters somewhere else in the focus window can cause a keylogger to record more information than it needs to, but this could be easily filtered out by an attacker. Similarly, a user can move their cursor using

3770-401: The technical, social and financial barriers to forking a source code repository are massively reduced, and GitHub uses "fork" as its term for this method of contribution to a project. Forks often restart version numbering from numbers typically used for initial versions of programs like 0.0.1, 0.1, or 1.0 even if the original software was at another version such as 3.0, 4.0, or 5.0. An exception

3835-524: The use of hooks and certain APIs ). No software-based anti-spyware application can be 100% effective against all keyloggers. Software-based anti-spyware cannot defeat non-software keyloggers (for example, hardware keyloggers attached to keyboards will always receive keystrokes before any software-based anti-spyware application). The particular technique that the anti-spyware application uses will influence its potential effectiveness against software keyloggers. As

3900-488: The use of a hardware or BIOS based keylogger. Many anti-spyware applications can detect some software based keyloggers and quarantine, disable, or remove them. However, because many keylogging programs are legitimate pieces of software under some circumstances, anti-spyware often neglects to label keylogging programs as spyware or a virus. These applications can detect software-based keyloggers based on patterns in executable code , heuristics and keylogger behaviors (such as

3965-506: The user again. This does not affect the common case of a stolen, lost, or confiscated computer. The attacker having physical access to a computer can, for example, install a hardware or a software keylogger , a bus-mastering device capturing memory or install any other malicious hardware or software , allowing the attacker to capture unencrypted data (including encryption keys and passwords) or to decrypt encrypted data using captured passwords or encryption keys. Therefore, physical security

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4030-457: The user whenever an application attempts to make a network connection. This gives the user the chance to prevent the keylogger from " phoning home " with their typed information. Automatic form-filling programs may prevent keylogging by removing the requirement for a user to type personal details and passwords using the keyboard. Form fillers are primarily designed for Web browsers to fill in checkout pages and log users into their accounts. Once

4095-429: The user's account and credit card information has been entered into the program, it will be automatically entered into forms without ever using the keyboard or clipboard , thereby reducing the possibility that private data is being recorded. However, someone with physical access to the machine may still be able to install software that can intercept this information elsewhere in the operating system or while in transit on

4160-463: The whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. 3. Derived Works: The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. In free software, forks often result from a schism over different goals or personality clashes. In a fork, both parties assume nearly identical code bases, but typically only

4225-567: Was in use in the present sense by 1995 to describe the XEmacs split, and was an understood usage in the GNU Project by 1996. Free and open-source software may be legally forked without prior approval of those currently developing, managing, or distributing the software per both The Free Software Definition and The Open Source Definition : The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this, you can give

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