MacOS – Is the Mac partition secure if it has FileVault 2 but the Boot Camp partition is unencrypted

bootcampfilevaultmacosSecuritywindows

With a Macbook Pro Retina running OS X 10.10 and Boot Camp Windows 7, my Mac HD is encrypted with FileVault 2 and the Boot Camp partition is unencrypted. Does this weaken the security of the Mac HD partition?

Best Answer

Yes -

if you ask if Mac HD was safe. The Bootcamp partition, however, is not. Any attacker could easily gain access to your Windows system or any other unencrypted partition on your drive. Make sure not to store sensitive information there (e.g. WiFi password, etc.). But normally the bootcamp partition does not contain information compromising the security of your filevault2 encrypted partition (Mac HD in your case). Those two are independent.

So in short: Having further unencrypted partitions on a filevault2 system disk does not degrade your security.

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