FileVault

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FileVault in the System Preferences under Security

FileVault is a system that protects files on a Macintosh computer. It can be found in the Mac OS X v10.3 ("Panther") operating system and later.

It works by encrypting the user's home directory using the 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm with a key derived from the user's login password. A master password must be set as a precaution against a user losing his or her password. Content is automatically encrypted and decrypted on the fly. Although early versions were slow and caused system to temporarily hang when used with disk-intensive applications, such as sound and video editing, the performance of FileVault has been improved in more recent versions of Mac OS X.

1 Criticism
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Criticism

Some users complain that it is not possible to select which parts of the disk to encrypt. In contrast to Linux, Microsoft Windows, and other operating systems, only entire home directories can be encrypted. For example, the user cannot encrypt the whole disk as one would be able to in Linux or Windows XP with various disk encryption software. One possible workaround is the use of use Apple's Disk Utility Application, included in the standard installation, to create an encrypted disk image using the same 128-bit AES encryption offered by FileVault, which allows users to encrypt specific files and folders.

Several shortcomings have been identified in FileVault's use of cryptography, such as the use of the CBC mode of operation which leads to watermarking attacks, reliance on 1024-bit RSA and 3DES-EDE which have an effective key size below that of 128-bit AES, and unsafe storage of keys in the OS X "safe sleep" mode.^[1]