[JUSTIFY]There’s been a fair amount of discussion around the recently introduced LUKS nuke patch we added to the cryptsetup package in Kali Linux. We wanted to take this opportunity to better explain this feature, as well as demonstrate some useful approaches which are worthwhile getting to know.[/JUSTIFY] LUKS Nuke in a Nutshell [JUSTIFY]As explained well By Michael Lee in his ZDNet article, when creating an encrypted LUKS container, a master key is generated at random. A passphrase is then used to encrypt the master key in turn. This process means that the passphrase is not directly coupled to the data. That is, if two sets of identical data are encrypted and the same passphrase used, the master keys remain unique to each set and cannot be swapped out. What this also means however, is that regardless of the passphrase used, if the master key is lost, recovering data is impossible. This process conveniently lends itself to being used as a nuke by deliberately wiping the keys.[/JUSTIFY] Example Use Case of LUKS Nuke [JUSTIFY]Our main purpose for introducing this feature in Kali Linux is to simplify the process of securely traveling with confidential client information. While “LUKS Nuking” your drive will result in an inaccessible disk, it is possible to backup your keyslots beforehand and restore them after the fact. What this allows us to do is to “brick” our sensitive laptops before any travel, separate ourselves from the restoration keys (which we encrypt), and then “restore” them to the machines once back in a safe location. This way, if our hardware is lost or otherwise accessed midway through our travels, no one is able to restore the data on it, including ourselves.[/JUSTIFY] [JUSTIFY]There are other ways to delete your keyslots, however the advantage of the Nuke option is it is quick, easy, and does not require you to fully login to your Kali installation. If you maintain a backup of your header, you can Nuke the keyslots whenever you feel uncomfortable. Then conduct a restoration when you feel secure.[/JUSTIFY] Try this for yourself [JUSTIFY]Let’s go through the motions of encrypting, backing up, destroying, and then restoring your data using Kali Linux. Start by downloading and installing Kali Linux 1.0.6 with Full Disk Encryption. Once that is done, you can verify your information as follows:[/JUSTIFY] root@kali-crypto:~# cryptsetup luksDump /dev/sda5 LUKS header information for /dev/sda5 Version: 1 Cipher name: aes Cipher mode: xts-plain64 Hash spec: sha1 Payload offset: 4096 MK bits: 512 MK digest: 04 cd d0 51 bf 57 10 f5 87 08 07 d5 c8 2a 34 24 7a 89 3b db MK salt: 27 42 e5 a6 b2 53 7f de 00 26 d3 f8 66 fb 9e 48 16 a2 b0 a9 2c bb cc f6 ea 66 e6 b1 79 08 69 17 MK iterations: 65750 UUID: 126d0121-05e4-4f1d-94d8-bed88e8c246d Key Slot 0: ENABLED Iterations: 223775 Salt: 7b ee 18 9e 46 77 60 2a f6 e2 a6 13 9f 59 0a 88 7b b2 db 84 25 98 f3 ae 61 36 3a 7d 96 08 a4 49 Key material offset: 8 AF stripes: 4000 Key Slot 1: DISABLED Key Slot 2: DISABLED Key Slot 3: DISABLED Key Slot 4: DISABLED Key Slot 5: DISABLED Key Slot 6: DISABLED Key Slot 7: DISABLED [JUSTIFY]As you can see, we have slot 0 enabled with slots 1 to 7 unused. At this point, we will add our nuke key.[/JUSTIFY] root@kali-crypto:~# cryptsetup luksAddNuke /dev/sda5 Enter any existing passphrase: Enter new passphrase for key slot: [JUSTIFY]Again, we will dump our LUKS header and see what is changed.[/JUSTIFY] root@kali-crypto:~# cryptsetup luksDump /dev/sda5 LUKS header information for /dev/sda5 Version: 1 Cipher name: aes Cipher mode: xts-plain64 Hash spec: sha1 Payload offset: 4096 MK bits: 512 MK digest: 04 cd d0 51 bf 57 10 f5 87 08 07 d5 c8 2a 34 24 7a 89 3b db MK salt: 27 42 e5 a6 b2 53 7f de 00 26 d3 f8 66 fb 9e 48 16 a2 b0 a9 2c bb cc f6 ea 66 e6 b1 79 08 69 17 MK iterations: 65750 UUID: 126d0121-05e4-4f1d-94d8-bed88e8c246d Key Slot 0: ENABLED Iterations: 223775 Salt: 7b ee 18 9e 46 77 60 2a f6 e2 a6 13 9f 59 0a 88 7b b2 db 84 25 98 f3 ae 61 36 3a 7d 96 08 a4 49 Key material offset: 8 AF stripes: 4000 Key Slot 1: ENABLED Iterations: 267782 Salt: 8c e5 a2 31 60 2a f5 39 41 e9 52 94 eb 82 b8 c2 b7 a6 6e 4a 7a 0e b1 85 c2 3a 75 d6 a7 6a 76 b3 Key material offset: 512 AF stripes: 4000 Key Slot 2: DISABLED Key Slot 3: DISABLED Key Slot 4: DISABLED Key Slot 5: DISABLED Key Slot 6: DISABLED Key Slot 7: DISABLED [JUSTIFY]Wonderful. Here we see that we have now slot 1 being used for our nuke key. Now we need to back up the data. This can easily be done with the “luksHeaderBackup” option.[/JUSTIFY] root@kali-crypto:~# cryptsetup luksHeaderBackup --header-backup-file luksheader.back /dev/sda5 root@kali-crypto:~# file luksheader.back luksheader.back: LUKS encrypted file, ver 1 [aes, xts-plain64, sha1] UUID: 126d0121-05e4-4f1d-94d8-bed88e8c246d root@kali-crypto:~# [JUSTIFY]So, in our case we would like to encrypt this data for storage. There are a number of ways this could be done, however we will use openssl to make the process quick and easy using default tools in Kali.[/JUSTIFY] root@kali-crypto:~# openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -salt -in luksheader.back -out luksheader.back.enc enter aes-256-cbc encryption password: Verifying - enter aes-256-cbc encryption password: root@kali-crypto:~# ls -lh luksheader.back* -r-------- 1 root root 2.0M Jan 9 13:42 luksheader.back -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2.0M Jan 9 15:50 luksheader.back.enc root@kali-crypto:~# file luksheader.back* luksheader.back: LUKS encrypted file, ver 1 [aes, xts-plain64, sha1] UUID: 126d0121-05e4-4f1d-94d8-bed88e8c246d luksheader.back.enc: data [JUSTIFY]Great, now we have the encrypted header ready to be backed up. In this case, we would like to place the header somewhere that it is easily accessible. This could be as simple as on a USB thumb drive that is kept in a safe location. At this point, lets make use of the Nuke key and see how Kali responds.[/JUSTIFY] [JUSTIFY]So we used the Nuke key, and as expected we can no longer boot into Kali. Let’s see what happened on the actual disk by booting up into a Kali live CD and dumping the LUKS header again.[/JUSTIFY] root@kali:~# cryptsetup luksDump /dev/sda5 LUKS header information for /dev/sda5 Version: 1 Cipher name: aes Cipher mode: xts-plain64 Hash spec: sha1 Payload offset: 4096 MK bits: 512 MK digest: 04 cd d0 51 bf 57 10 f5 87 08 07 d5 c8 2a 34 24 7a 89 3b db MK salt: 27 42 e5 a6 b2 53 7f de 00 26 d3 f8 66 fb 9e 48 16 a2 b0 a9 2c bb cc f6 ea 66 e6 b1 79 08 69 17 MK iterations: 65750 UUID: 126d0121-05e4-4f1d-94d8-bed88e8c246d Key Slot 0: DISABLED Key Slot 1: DISABLED Key Slot 2: DISABLED Key Slot 3: DISABLED Key Slot 4: DISABLED Key Slot 5: DISABLED Key Slot 6: DISABLED Key Slot 7: DISABLED [JUSTIFY]As we can see, no keyslots are in use. The Nuke worked as expected. To restore the header back in place, it’s a simple matter of retrieving the encrypted header from your USB drive. Once we have that, we can decrypt it and conduct our restore:[/JUSTIFY] root@kali:~# openssl enc -d -aes-256-cbc -in luksheader.back.enc -out luksheader.back enter aes-256-cbc decryption password: root@kali:~# cryptsetup luksHeaderRestore --header-backup-file luksheader.back /dev/sda5 WARNING! ======== Device /dev/sda5 already contains LUKS header. Replacing header will destroy existing keyslots. Are you sure? (Type uppercase yes): YES root@kali:~# cryptsetup luksDump /dev/sda5 LUKS header information for /dev/sda5 Version: 1 Cipher name: aes Cipher mode: xts-plain64 Hash spec: sha1 Payload offset: 4096 MK bits: 512 MK digest: 04 cd d0 51 bf 57 10 f5 87 08 07 d5 c8 2a 34 24 7a 89 3b db MK salt: 27 42 e5 a6 b2 53 7f de 00 26 d3 f8 66 fb 9e 48 16 a2 b0 a9 2c bb cc f6 ea 66 e6 b1 79 08 69 17 MK iterations: 65750 UUID: 126d0121-05e4-4f1d-94d8-bed88e8c246d Key Slot 0: ENABLED Iterations: 223775 Salt: 7b ee 18 9e 46 77 60 2a f6 e2 a6 13 9f 59 0a 88 7b b2 db 84 25 98 f3 ae 61 36 3a 7d 96 08 a4 49 Key material offset: 8 AF stripes: 4000 Key Slot 1: ENABLED Iterations: 267782 Salt: 8c e5 a2 31 60 2a f5 39 41 e9 52 94 eb 82 b8 c2 b7 a6 6e 4a 7a 0e b1 85 c2 3a 75 d6 a7 6a 76 b3 Key material offset: 512 AF stripes: 4000 Key Slot 2: DISABLED Key Slot 3: DISABLED Key Slot 4: DISABLED Key Slot 5: DISABLED Key Slot 6: DISABLED Key Slot 7: DISABLED [JUSTIFY]Our slots are now restored. All we have to do is simply reboot and provide our normal LUKS password and the system is back to its original state.[/JUSTIFY] Continue reading...
