VeraCrypt - Free Open source disk encryption with strong security for the Paranoid

Age	Commit message (Expand)	Author	Files	Lines
2014-11-08	Set the Execute bit for VeraCrypt uninstall script before copying it to the t...	Mounir IDRASSI	1	-0/+1
2014-11-08	Add VeraCrypt specific Linux packaging code in Makefiles and add various help...	Mounir IDRASSI	1	-1/+57
2014-11-08	Change namespace from TrueCrypt to VeraCrypt. Rename method from Resources Re...	Mounir IDRASSI	91	-96/+96
2014-11-08	Update wxFormBuild file to latest version (3.5 beta) and generate new Forms.c...	Mounir IDRASSI	3	-4086/+12798
2014-11-08	Point to the SourceForge website instead of idrix.fr for the application link...	Mounir IDRASSI	1	-2/+2
2014-11-08	Change legacy version check in newly added Linux/MacOSX sources from 0x600 (T...	Mounir IDRASSI	2	-4/+4
2014-11-08	Adapt Makefiles for VeraCrypt. Use PKCS#11 headers from source tree is not sp...	Mounir IDRASSI	1	-2/+2
2014-11-08	wxWidgets 3.0 compatibility modifications	Mounir IDRASSI	8	-17/+17
2014-11-08	Replace TrueCrypt from Linux/MacOSX mount point names	Mounir IDRASSI	1	-2/+2
2014-11-08	Replace TrueCrypt references in added sources and resources by VeraCrypt ones.	Mounir IDRASSI	17	-82/+82
2014-11-08	Add TrueCrypt 7.1a MacOSX/Linux specific source files.	Mounir IDRASSI	99	-0/+37644

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>VeraCrypt - Free Open source disk encryption with strong security for the Paranoid</title> <meta name="description" content="VeraCrypt is free open-source disk encryption software for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. In case an attacker forces you to reveal the password, VeraCrypt provides plausible deniability. In contrast to file encryption, data encryption performed by VeraCrypt is real-time (on-the-fly), automatic, transparent, needs very little memory, and does not involve temporary unencrypted files."/> <meta name="keywords" content="encryption, security"/> <link href="styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> </head> <body> <div> <a href="Documentation.html"><img src="VeraCrypt128x128.png" alt="VeraCrypt"/></a> </div> <div id="menu"> <ul> <li><a href="Home.html">Home</a></li> <li><a href="/code/">Source Code</a></li> <li><a href="Downloads.html">Downloads</a></li> <li><a class="active" href="Documentation.html">Documentation</a></li> <li><a href="Donation.html">Donate</a></li> <li><a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/veracrypt/discussion/" target="_blank">Forums</a></li> </ul> </div> <div> <p> <a href="Documentation.html">Documentation</a> <img src="arrow_right.gif" alt=">>" style="margin-top: 5px"> <a href="Technical%20Details.html">Technical Details</a> <img src="arrow_right.gif" alt=">>" style="margin-top: 5px"> <a href="Header%20Key%20Derivation.html">Header Key Derivation, Salt, and Iteration Count</a> </p></div> <div class="wikidoc"> <h1>Header Key Derivation, Salt, and Iteration Count</h1> <div style="text-align:left; margin-top:19px; margin-bottom:19px; padding-top:0px; padding-bottom:0px"> Header key is used to encrypt and decrypt the encrypted area of the VeraCrypt volume header (for <a href="System%20Encryption.html" style="text-align:left; color:#0080c0; text-decoration:none.html"> system encryption</a>, of the keydata area), which contains the master key and other data (see the sections <a href="Encryption%20Scheme.html" style="text-align:left; color:#0080c0; text-decoration:none.html"> Encryption Scheme</a> and <a href="VeraCrypt%20Volume%20Format%20Specification.html" style="text-align:left; color:#0080c0; text-decoration:none.html"> VeraCrypt Volume Format Specification</a>). In volumes created by VeraCrypt (and for <a href="System%20Encryption.html" style="text-align:left; color:#0080c0; text-decoration:none.html"> system encryption</a>), the area is encrypted in XTS mode (see the section <a href="Modes%20of%20Operation.html" style="text-align:left; color:#0080c0; text-decoration:none.html"> Modes of Operation</a>). The method that VeraCrypt uses to generate the header key and the secondary header key (XTS mode) is PBKDF2, specified in PKCS #5 v2.0; see <a href="References.html" style="text-align:left; color:#0080c0; text-decoration:none.html"> [7]</a>.</div> <div style="text-align:left; margin-top:19px; margin-bottom:19px; padding-top:0px; padding-bottom:0px"> 512-bit salt is used, which means there are 2<sup style="text-align:left; font-size:85%">512</sup> keys for each password. This significantly decreases vulnerability to 'off-line' dictionary/'rainbow table' attacks (pre-computing all the keys for a dictionary of passwords is very difficult when a salt is used) [7]. The salt consists of random values generated by the <a href="Random%20Number%20Generator.html" style="text-align:left; color:#0080c0; text-decoration:none.html"> VeraCrypt random number generator</a> during the volume creation process. The header key derivation function is based on HMAC-SHA-512, HMAC-SHA-256, HMAC-BLAKE2S-256, HMAC-Whirlpool or HMAC-Streebog (see [8, 9, 20, 22]) – the user selects which. The length of the derived key does not depend on the size of the output of the underlying hash function. For example, a header key for the AES-256 cipher is always 256 bits long even if HMAC-SHA-512 is used (in XTS mode, an additional 256-bit secondary header key is used; hence, two 256-bit keys are used for AES-256 in total). For more information, refer to [7]. A large number of iterations of the key derivation function have to be performed to derive a header key, which increases the time necessary to perform an exhaustive search for passwords (i.e., brute force attack) [7].</div> <div style="text-align:left; margin-top:19px; margin-bottom:19px; padding-top:0px; padding-bottom:0px"> <p>Prior to version 1.12, VeraCrypt always used a fixed number of iterations That depended only on the volume type and the derivation algorithm used. Starting from version 1.12, the <a href="Personal%20Iterations%20Multiplier%20%28PIM%29.html"> PIM </a>field (<a href="Personal%20Iterations%20Multiplier%20%28PIM%29.html">Personal Iterations Multiplier</a>) enables users to have more control over the number of iterations used by the key derivation function.</p> <p> <p>When a <a href="Personal%20Iterations%20Multiplier%20%28PIM%29.html"> PIM </a>value is not specified or if it is equal to zero, VeraCrypt uses the default values expressed below:<br/> <ul> <li>For system partition encryption (boot encryption) that uses SHA-256, BLAKE2s-256 or Streebog, <strong>200000</strong> iterations are used.</li> <li>For system encryption that uses SHA-512 or Whirlpool, <strong>500000</strong> iterations are used.</li> <li>For non-system encryption and file containers, all derivation algorithms will use <strong>500000</strong> iterations. </li></ul> </p> <p>When a <a href="Personal%20Iterations%20Multiplier%20%28PIM%29.html"> PIM </a>value is given by the user, the number of iterations of the key derivation function is calculated as follows:</p> <ul> <li>For system encryption that doesn't use SHA-512 or Whirlpool: Iterations = <strong>PIM x 2048</strong> </li><li>For system encryption that uses SHA-512 or Whirlpool: Iterations = <strong>15000 + (PIM x 1000)</strong> </li><li>For non-system encryption and file containers: Iterations = <strong>15000 + (PIM x 1000)</strong> </li></ul> </div> <div style="text-align:left; margin-top:19px; margin-bottom:19px; padding-top:0px; padding-bottom:0px"> Header keys used by ciphers in a cascade are mutually independent, even though they are derived from a single password (to which keyfiles may have been applied). For example, for the AES-Twofish-Serpent cascade, the header key derivation function is instructed to derive a 768-bit encryption key from a given password (and, for XTS mode, in addition, a 768-bit <em style="text-align:left">secondary</em> header key from the given password). The generated 768-bit header key is then split into three 256-bit keys (for XTS mode, the <em style="text-align:left">secondary</em> header key is split into three 256-bit keys too, so the cascade actually uses six 256-bit keys in total), out of which the first key is used by Serpent, the second key is used by Twofish, and the third by AES (in addition, for XTS mode, the first secondary key is used by Serpent, the second secondary key is used by Twofish, and the third secondary key by AES). Hence, even when an adversary has one of the keys, he cannot use it to derive the other keys, as there is no feasible method to determine the password from which the key was derived (except for brute force attack mounted on a weak password).</div> <div style="text-align:left; margin-top:19px; margin-bottom:19px; padding-top:0px; padding-bottom:0px"> <a href="Random%20Number%20Generator.html" style="text-align:left; color:#0080c0; text-decoration:none; font-weight:bold.html">Next Section >></a></div> </div><div class="ClearBoth"></div></body></html>