Monday, July 18, 2011

Safeboot with EnCase or FTK

Both (current versions) of EnCase and FTK work with Safeboot Full Disk Encryption 4.x.
EnCase has to be 32 bit version (not 64 bit). According to Guidance Software support people Safeboot 4.1 or higher versions are not supported by EnCase. In reality Safeboot 4.1 decryption works just fine with EnCase 6.18 as long as one follows the detailed instructions.

FTK 3 officially supports SafeBoot Version 4.x and Version 5.x as well as McAfee Endpoint Encryption Version 6.x. There is no '32 bit only' limitations because there is no need to install SafeBoot Tool or anything extra.


Access to the SafeBoot server is requred when working with both EnCase and FTK.There is no need to export/copy out any files for decrypting with FTK. For Safeboot versions 4.x and 5.x the decryption key can be obtained by runing SbAdmCl.exe command line tool. It's location can vary from version to version on the Safeboot server.

SbAdmCl.exe -AdminUser:admin -AdminPwd:password -command:GetMachineKey -Machine:Machinename

To extract decryption keys for a group of computers the same command can be issued with  -Group:* instead of -Machine:Machinename

The command should return 32 bit Encryption Key(s) that can be entered in FTK when the encrypted evidence files are added to the case.

In McAfee Endpoint Encryption Version 6.x the key is exported from the server by using ePO (ePolicy Orchestrator). Check "Exporting the recovery information file from ePO" section of McAfee EETech User Guide for details. Once the .xml file is exported, a base64 key located between < key > and < / key >  needs to be copied, decoded and converted to hex. The easiest way to accomplish the task is to utilise this online "Base64 -> hexadecimal string decoder", which should produce the decryption key required by FTK.

UPDATE: 16 August 2011
 EnCase Version 6.19 just has been released. The new version now provides support for McAfee Endpoint Encryption 6.0.

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