1. Don't decrypt the volume on the drive: copy it to a computer first. Of course, when you copy the re-encrypted volume back, it may not necessarily overwrite the original volume, leaving an attacker with two versions of the same volume. The may weaken the encryption, but only very slightly (as far as my understanding goes).
2. Make the volume the same size as the USB drive, then the re-encryption process will definitely overwrite any decrypted information that was previously on the drive, wear levelling or not.
I really know nothing about this, but as far as I know the wear levelling mechanisms are often built into the flash chips themselves...if this is true, it would take a pretty dedicated and well-funded attacker to bypass the mechanisms and access the memory cells directly.
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Well spotted, Fro.
I suppose there are two ways around this:
1. Don't decrypt the volume on the drive: copy it to a computer first. Of course, when you copy the re-encrypted volume back, it may not necessarily overwrite the original volume, leaving an attacker with two versions of the same volume. The may weaken the encryption, but only very slightly (as far as my understanding goes).
2. Make the volume the same size as the USB drive, then the re-encryption process will definitely overwrite any decrypted information that was previously on the drive, wear levelling or not.
I really know nothing about this, but as far as I know the wear levelling mechanisms are often built into the flash chips themselves...if this is true, it would take a pretty dedicated and well-funded attacker to bypass the mechanisms and access the memory cells directly.
Please, correct me if any of the above is wrong.