this problem may be solvable by a purpose-built abstraction where every write no matter what address will look identical to the firmware (naively, a randomized key-value map).
However, if you must do it, there are better options than duress pins that wipe a device.
> If you need plausible deniability, you must not use VeraCrypt to encrypt any part of (or create encrypted containers on) a device (or file system) that utilizes a wear-leveling mechanism.
what do you imagine allocation is in this context? it's just a set of written blocks that mark address ranges and other metadata for the OS filesystem driver (all encrypted).
firmware metadata will leak the fact that there is churn in the address range where a potential hidden volume lies. the churn will be inconsistent with filesystem activity that would be present in its absence.
it's not just SSDs you need to worry about either, HDD firmware also keeps metadata, some of it could be be proxy to churn by region.
You’re assuming separation exists. VeraCrypt specifically and intentionally allocates the hidden partition blocks from the unallocated space within the normal partition. You know, the same thing that would happen if you wrote a file. Even if you had access to the “open” partition, you couldn’t conclude that “there’s allocated blocks but no files, thus hidden partition” - that presumes the filesystem would TRIM immediately, which is indistinguishable from “there’s just a lot of deleted files that haven’t yet been GC’ed”.
Now to be clear, VeraCrypt specifically is believed to be susceptible to SSD side channel attacks, but even still it’s not definitive conclusions. You’re less likely to be betrayed by the firmware than the OS helpfully remembering you opened a file on a hidden partition and saving that history into the unhidden partition.
trim lets the firmware know which mappings it can discard without the explicit reuse of the same address.
however I don't believe you can observe this effect from trim command results, it will report the usual size trimmed as if the firmware never realized that you reused the same address range multiple times.
Given what the experience of using a non-rooted phone is like, how very very tight the sandboxing is and how useless it is a General Purpose Computer that will tell you anything: I find it very hard to believe the unlocked phone is going to let you start probing firmware & snooping on hidden volumes.
This post sent my BS detector on high alert. I'm struggling to take it seriously.
no one will be accessing the firmware through the OS, they will access it from the PCB/chip/debug port. there is no point to a hidden volume if you cannot credibly deny its existance.
i think there's an enormous amount of theater, that ridiculous over-fear that buys in to the mythology is actively bad. we see this everywhere. it was the leading point at the start that Cory Doctorow had against Shoshana Zuboff's Age of Surveillance Capitalism: that not only do the critics accept the incredible super powers of surveillance that are being marketed to us, they radically over-accentuate & amplify the capabilities. fearmongering is wicked effective! Take the PR and say, see, isn't it terrible? They can program our lives, make us do anything with their ads! except, it's just not nearly anywhere so bad. https://jon-lund.com/main/doctorow-v-zuboff-the-real-problem...
we see that with AI regularly. both the labs and the people of the world are totally on board to radically over-promote the capabilities, to say they can do anything. the story of models escaping containment, leaving notes to themselves? i mean, isn't the story just that you aren't monitoring your runs at all and have no human supervision here? that you swarmed so hard, and you did it without any way to have your swarm even moderately supervised? i'm having a harder time nailing this down exactly but it feels like a once again mythology building project, creating ridiculous impressions. to be sure, the hugging face hack was a pretty remarkable story. but i think we tend to assign quasi-mystical understanding, that we mythologize readily.
i cant remember where i read it but i think all the time of i think a Sid Meier's interview maybe or something, discussing the development of The Sims, where sponteaneous combustion was a huge problem in the game for a long time. it was a bug, unintentional, the story goes here. but play testers and gamers invented all manner of excuse, backwards justification, reading of tea leaves, laying of bones to ascribe meaning to the events, to declare it's purposefulness. humanity is such an immense pattern matcher and our talent it to ascribe meaning to it, but holy frelling frak if you haven't seen the 21st century and decided that we dont go way way way in on that allowing all manner of false positives in to our meaning, if we aren't super apt to believe incredible tall tales, the tallest dirtiest (orangest) of nonsense, i just don't know what to tell you.