Robert - 06 / 08 / 24

Why Anonymity isn’t enough for sensitive use ?

In this post we are going to see why Anonymity is not enough for Sensitive use, and what can be done about it.

What happens when you are forced to give out your password ?

Let's say that Bob is using a popular online forum to leak information about a government agency’s unethical behavior. To stay anonymous, he makes sure to connect to the forum using at least Tor to connect there. He uses a burner email address to sign up there, to upload the sensitive files. His Anonymity while doing this sensitive action remains solid.

However, there are only 10 people who could have originally had access to the leaked information, and Bob is one of those 10 potential suspects.

The adversary makes use of the key disclosure legislation to issue search warrants to all 10 people, to get to know the contents of their personal drives. Essentially, they don't have anything solid against Bob, as the anonymity of the perpetrating party is solid, but they are doing some guess work to try and find anything incriminating against him anyway, to make sure.

Problem is, the adversary now busts down Bob's door, and forces him to unlock his laptop, and unlock every encrypted volume on his laptop. What then ?

Bob didn't implement Deniable Encryption, therefore the adversary forces Bob to unlock his harddrives, and he has no other choice but to comply. He shows all the incriminating evidence contained in there, where he isn't able to deny implications with said Sensitive activity.

Bob's setup, although suitable for Anonymous Use, is not suitable for Sensitive use, due to the lack of Deniable encryption

For instance, if Bob had implemented VeraCrypt’s deniable encryption to store all that sensitive data, he could've given the password A to open the decoy volume to the adversary, and claimed that there was no hidden volume, and the adversary wouldn't have a way to prove otherwise.