Aloaha Crypt Disk

Digital Certificate based disk encryption software for Windows

Laptops and removable media devices have provided today’s mobile workforce the freedom to work anywhere. With this freedom comes a greater risk of a data breach through lost or stolen devices. Aloaha Crypt Disk combines strong disk and removable media encryption to protect sensitive information and ensure regulatory compliance.

Aloaha Crypt Disk supports various types of fixed removable media including USB drives and external hard drives, and CD/DVD/Blu-ray media.

If you just want to encrypt single files please have a look at our PKCS #7 Crypter

Also our certificate encrypted ZIP might be of interest for you!

How Aloaha Crypt Disk works

Aloaha Crypt Disk is a software for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume. On-the-fly encryption means that data is automatically encrypted right before it is saved and decrypted right after it is loaded - without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct digital certificate.

Since you can assign a drive letter to a volume files can be copied to and from a mounted Aloaha Crypt Disk volume just like they are copied to/from any normal disk. Files are automatically being decrypted on the fly (in memory/RAM) while they are being read or copied from an encrypted Aloaha Crypt Disk volume. Similarly, files that are being written or copied to the Aloaha Crypt Disk volume are automatically being encrypted on the fly (right before they are written to the disk) in RAM. Note that this does not mean that the whole file that is to be encrypted/decrypted must be stored in RAM before it can be encrypted/decrypted. There are no extra memory (RAM) requirements for Aloaha Crypt Disk.

Note that Aloaha Crypt Disk never saves any decrypted data to a disk – it only stores them temporarily in RAM (memory). Even when the volume is mounted, data stored in the volume is still encrypted. When you restart Windows or turn off your computer, the volume will be dismounted and files stored in it will be inaccessible (and encrypted). Even when power supply is suddenly interrupted (without proper system shut down), files stored in the volume are inaccessible (and encrypted). To make them accessible again, you have to mount the volume with the correct certificate.

Features

Container based
Digital Certificate used for encryption - no password required!
Plausible deniability with hidden container
Many Ciphers: AES, Serpent, Twofish, AES-Twofish, AES-Twofish-Serpent, Serpent-AES, Serpent-Twofish-AES and Twofish-Serpent
Many Hash functions: RIPEMD-160, SHA-512, and Whirlpool
XTS mode of operation. XTS mode is more secure than LRW mode, which in turn is more secure than CBC mode
The header key and the secondary header key are generated using PBKDF2 with a 512-bit salt and 1000 or 2000 iterations, depending on the underlying hash function used
FREE FOR PRIVATE USE

Compliance

To our best knowledge, Aloaha Crypt Disk complies with the following standards, specifications, and recommendations:

ISO/IEC 10118-3:2004
FIPS 197
FIPS 198
FIPS 180-2
NIST SP 800-3E
PKCS #5 v2.0
PKCS #11 v2.20

You don’t hear much about FIPS 197 because it morphed into the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). AES-128, AES-192, and AES-256.

If you see AES listed as an encryption method you’re considering, you’re looking at a FIPS 197 product. A host of other encryption algorithms are available, and with the NSA known to have supported many open source security projects (SSL, PGP, etc.) it’s conceivable that a FIPS 197 device might be your better option.

Performance

Parallelization

When your computer has a multi-core processor (or multiple processors), Aloaha Crypt Disk uses all of the cores (or processors) in parallel for encryption and decryption. For example, when Aloaha Crypt Disk is to decrypt a chunk of data, it first splits the chunk into several smaller pieces. The number of the pieces is equal to the number of the cores (or processors). Then, all of the pieces are decrypted in parallel (piece 1 is decrypted by thread 1, piece 2 is decrypted by thread 2, etc). The same method is used for encryption.

When your computer has a multi-core processor/CPU (or multiple processors/CPUs), header key derivation is parallelized too. As a result, mounting of a volume is several times faster on a multi-core processor (or multi-processor computer) than on a single-core processor (or a single-processor computer) with equivalent specifications.

Pipelining

When encrypting or decrypting data, Aloaha Crypt Disk uses so-called pipelining (asynchronous processing). While an application is loading a portion of a file from a Aloaha Crypt Disk-encrypted volume/drive, Aloaha Crypt Disk is automatically decrypting it (in RAM). Thanks to pipelining, the application does not have wait for any portion of the file to be decrypted and it can start loading other portions of the file right away. The same applies to encryption when writing data to an encrypted volume/drive.
Pipelining allows data to be read from and written to an encrypted drive as fast as if the drive was not encrypted.

FAQ

I lost my certificate – is there any way ('backdoor') to recover the files from my volume?

We have not implemented any 'backdoor' in Aloaha Crypt Disk (and will never implement any even if asked to do so by a government agency), because it would defeat the purpose of the software. Aloaha Crypt Disk does not allow decryption of data without having access to the right certificate. The only way to recover your files is to try to "crack" the key, but it could take thousands or millions of years.

Can I encrypt a partition/drive where Windows is installed?

No, because we do not have access to any certificate prior the boot of Windows

Why is Aloaha Crypt Disk open-source? What are the advantages?

As the source code for Aloaha Crypt Disk is publicly available for commercial customer, independent researchers can verify that the source code does not contain any security flaw or secret 'backdoor'. If the source code were not available, reviewers would need to reverse-engineer the executable files. However, analyzing and understanding such reverse-engineered code is so difficult that it is practically impossible to do.

Has anybody actually reviewed the source code?

Yes. In fact, the source code is constantly being reviewed by our commercial users.

Does Aloaha Crypt Disk also encrypt file names and folder names?

Yes. The entire file system within a Aloaha Crypt Disk volume is encrypted (including file names, folder names, and contents of every file).

Will I be able to mount my Aloaha Crypt Disk volume (container) on any computer?

Yes, Aloaha Crypt Disk volumes are independent of the operating system. You will be able to mount your Aloaha Crypt Disk volume on any computer on which you can run Aloaha Crypt Disk

Aloaha Software