in environments where surveillance, coercion, or seizure are actually real threats.
Standard encryption alone leaves you exposed. You could argue it keeps your data confidential,
what happens when someone puts a gun to your head and basically asks for the key that way,
or when a judge threatens you with contempt charges. If the adversary knows you're using encryption
and you can't explain away the encrypted material, you're pretty much done, right?
So that's where deniable encryption actually comes in. The art of hiding secrets so well
that you can convincingly claim that they never actually existed. Deniable encryption is a class
of cryptographic techniques that allow users to encrypt data in such a way that the existence of
certain information can be basically denied under direct scrutiny. And the goal extends far beyond
keeping unauthorized users out, like if you want to make it impossible to prove additional
undeclared data exists at all. The concept emerged in the early 1990s when researchers
began exploring ways to actually protect users against rubber hose cryptanalysis, the charming
practice of beating encrypted keys out of people with actual rubber hoses. Like in 1997,
Ross Anderson and Roger Neatham and Andy Schimer, sorry if I missed your name, formally introduced
the idea in their paper, the second and graphic file system. Their system posed a method where
multiple encrypted files could coexist on the same physical security with different passwords,
unlocking different layers of data. That makes sense. Simple but really powerful,
if someone forces you to unlock your actual encrypted files, you reveal only the decoy
volume and convincingly deny that anything else exists. The model was later implemented
in tools like TrueCrypt and its successor, which is Veracrypt, which introduced the hidden volume
feature. The user creates an encrypted container within another encrypted container, each with
different passwords. One password reveals your tax returns, let's say, and cat photos,
and that's the decoy. Another reveals your XMR wallet, Bitcoin wallet keys, or whatever
else that you'd rather keep private. Crucially, the existence of the second volume remains
completely undetectable. Even advanced forensics can't really distinguish between unused disk space
and hidden data. And there are two main types of deniable encryption that actually exist,
this storage base deniability, which is physical or logical structures like disk volumes, for
example, that contain multiple layers of encrypted data without actual revealing that more than one
actually exists. Examples include Veracrypt hidden volumes or graphic file systems like Julina
Sange's old rubber hose project from 1997. So that one's dead. We come to communication-based
deniability. And here users can plausibly deny sending, receiving, or possessing
certain messages. Secure messaging protocols like off the record, which is now outdated, or signals
double ratchet algorithm also ensure that conversation transcripts can't be cryptographically
authenticated after the fact, preserving things like plausible deniability. That you're carrying
a blocked briefcase. A traditional encryption gives you a single key and forces you to open it.
And everything's exposed once that happens. Deniable encryption, however, creates multiple
secret compartments inside and like each accessible with a different key, more or less. Under coercion,
you open one with the boring documents, no evidence exists of the actual other
compartments in high risk environments. This becomes rather essential because of
his reasons. So we'll take Ross Olberg, for example. Now, when the FBI actually grabbed his laptop in
that San Francisco library, they called him logged in and it was game over. But imagine if he'd used
proper, deniable encryption with a duress password that wiped the real data while actually
displaying a decoy. Journalists and authoritarian regimes, dissidents and whistleblowers,
or anyone operating in legally gray areas needs systems where sensitive material,
the existence of that kind of stuff actually remains cryptographically deniable. If an adversary
can't actually prove the protected data exists, coercion loses its teeth. Deniable encryption
demands careful execution. Success absolutely depends on plausibility of how believable your
decoy actually appears. An empty volume or one filled with obvious generated junk raises some red
flags faster than a custom agent finding a kilo of white powder in your luggage. And if your
device shows 500 gigabytes used, but your actual decoy volume contains say three word
documents, investigators are going to piece together if there's an issue. Effective deniable
encryption requires chaff files, so to speak. There's stage documents and it's time consuming
kind of metadata to try to sell the illusion. Forensic memory analysis poses another threat.
See the device while powered on and RAM dumps may expose encryption keys, usage logs, or signs
of hidden containers. Chelsea Manning, for example, learned this the hard way. Investigators
recovered chat logs from RAM even after deletion. Proper operational use demands hold shutdown
protocols and amnesic systems, like tails, which clear RAM on power loss. Then there's the
whole legal minefield and some jurisdictions make refusing to decrypt data a crime in
itself. And the UK's repo or regulation of Investigatory Powers Act can actually land you
in prison for up to five years just for staying silent about your passwords. And in 2007 a British
citizen got 14 months for actually refusing to decrypt his device at the border. Now the
United States has the Fifth Amendment, but courts increasingly find kind of creative ways
to try to circumvent it and get around it. Biometric locks, for example, are not testimonial, so
no Fifth Amendment protection actually exists. Deniable encryption offers a solution for this,
comply with demands while also protecting what actually matters. File systems betray you in
a ton of different ways. So swap files, indexing services, thumbnail caches, like
recent file lists all leave breadcrumbs of some kind, pointing to hidden activity.
Windows helpfully creates shadow copies of files that you thought you actually deleted.
Mac OS indexes everything from spotlight search that actually happens. So even accessing a file
on a hidden drive might leave traces in system logs. Deniable encryption must pair with full
device operational security. So stuff like secure bootloaders and journaling suppression and encrypted
swap or no hibernation and minimal or ephemeral post systems, right? Real-world example is in
2020 German police raided a Dartmouth vendor's home and they found varicarp volumes but couldn't
actually prove hidden volumes existed. And the vendor provided the outer volume password
revealing cryptocurrency trading records and plausible for someone like him interested in
things like privacy. The hidden volume with the vendor's data remained undetected and
he walked eventually, right? So ultimately, deniable encryption provides control over
what your adversary can actually prove exists and not just who can actually access it, it adds
uncertainty to the surveillance equation making it almost impossible to know if the entire truth
has actually been extracted and that uncertainty protect the operator. So a good thing to do is
to ask yourself like if law enforcement kicked in your door right now, could you provide access
to a decoy that would stand up to screw you, right? Could you hide what actually matters
while leaving zero evidence it ever even existed? Because relying on encryption alone is kind of like
bringing a knife to a drone straight like technically your armed but you still kind of
screwed, right? Thank you for watching to the end and as always, I'll see you in the next video.