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Vista's Encryption Could Vex Investigators

Encryption features could mean law enforcement will face mighty challenges in unlocking data, academic says

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124774,00.asp

LONDON--Encryption features in Microsoft's upcoming OS release, Windows Vista, could pose tricky challenges for criminal investigators, a Cambridge University professor told British lawmakers earlier this week.


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Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering, told members of Parliament on Tuesday that TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip sets, used to restrict the downloading of copyrighted movies and music, could also lock up data on computers.


Piracy Blockers
TPM chip sets have been widely endorsed by both hardware and software manufacturers as a way to tighten the noose on piracy. Microsoft has said Windows Vista has features that take advantage of TPM chip set capabilities, including full encryption of a computer hard drive. TPM chip sets can store keys, passwords, and digital certificates associated with files and content.

"But an unfortunate side effect of this from the point of view of law enforcement is that it's going to be technically fairly seriously difficult to take encrypted material out of the system," Anderson told lawmakers.

Anderson's testimony came during a committee hearing concerning the length of pretrial detention of criminal suspects. Supporters of extended pretrial detention have pointed to the varied amounts of time needed to extract evidence from a computer.


Backdoor Key for Vista?
In an interview Friday, Anderson said it remains to be seen if Microsoft will include "backdoor" keys that would allow law enforcement to view documents that have been assigned restrictive viewing rules by a user.

"The whole point about Vista is that everything's always encrypted all the time because that enables you to enforce all these rights management rules," Anderson said. "The idea behind rights management is that the rules are no longer set by the person who owns the computer, but by the person who owns the document."

A cocaine dealer could take an Excel spreadsheet containing details of his December sales and assign rules that allow the document to be read by only a select few, Anderson said. The dealer could also set an expiration date for the document; when the keys in the TPM chip expired, the document would theoretically never be available again, Anderson said.

That is, unless Microsoft has built backdoor-key features into Vista, Anderson said. So far, it's not clear if Vista will have those capabilities, he said.


BitLocker Drive Encryption
Anderson said he has not examined the latest beta of the Vista OS containing BitLocker Drive Encryption, the feature that will be in the enterprise version of the OS and that allows for full encoding of the hard drive.

During the committee hearing, Anderson recommended that the Home Office talk with Microsoft about encryption issues. According to a report by the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Home Office said it is working with Microsoft on the issue.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said Friday that the company is working with U.K. law enforcement to help them understand Vista's security features, but she did not elaborate.