Use (Windows) BitLocker-encrypted drive on Ubuntu

Question

How could I mount my BitLocker encrypted drive on Ubuntu?

I have checked the Wine website, and it had no BitLocker support, and I have no idea how to install Dislocker on my computer.

I can not remove the encryption because my school computers use Windows OS instead of Linux OS. Also because I installed Ubuntu because my Windows OS was not working.

Answer 1

Since Ubuntu 18.04, Dislocker is available in the Ubuntu Universe packages. It can be installed using

sudo apt install dislocker

You may need to

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt update

---

First, we make two folders, /media/bitlocker and /media/mount:

sudo mkdir /media/bitlocker /media/mount

Then, download and then extract Dislocker.

You'll want to install some needed packages:

sudo apt-get install libfuse-dev

To install it, we need to change directory to the dislocker folder:

cd dislocker

Depending on your operating system, you'll need to choose one of these:

• For Debian-like distos based on Debian Jessie or Ubuntu 14.04 or older:

   aptitude install gcc cmake make libfuse-dev libpolarssl-dev ruby-dev
  

• For Debian-like distos based on Debian Stretch or Ubuntu 16.04 or later:

   aptitude install gcc cmake make libfuse-dev libmbedtls-dev ruby-dev
  

Now we finally install dislocker:

cmake .
make
sudo make install

Here, we need to find our partition so we dont erase all of our drives accidentally:

sudo fdisk -l

If we have a recovery password, we can decrypt it using this:

sudo dislocker -r -V /dev/sdaX -p 1536987-000000-000000-000000-000000-000000-000000-000000 -- /media/bitlocker

PS: You should replace 1536987-000000-000000-000000-000000-000000-000000-000000 with your recovery password.

If you know your password, we can just use that too:

sudo dislocker -r -V /dev/sdaX -u yourPassword -- /media/bitlocker

If your disk is mounted to sdb, use option sdb1.

If you are decrypting with a recovery file then use "path/to/.BEK" instead:

sudo dislocker-fuse -V /dev/sdcX -f /media/user/usb-drive/00000000-0X0X-0XX0-XXX0-XXXX0XXX00XX.BEK -- /media/bitlocker

Now, we finally mount our file:

sudo -i
cd /media/bitlocker
mount -r -o loop dislocker-file /media/mount

(If the mount above fails with "Permission denied" add the -r option and try again.)

Now you can move to the /media/mount folder and see your decrypted data.

Read the source for more information and details.

Answer 2

You need Dislocker to use BitLocker-encrypted drives. You can download it from here or there is a GitHub repository also.

To install it you will need:

• A compiler, GCC or Clang;
• Make (or gmake, for FreeBSD)
• Headers for FUSE;
• Headers for PolarSSL;
• A partition encrypted with BitLocker, from Windows Vista, 7 or 8.

For detailed instructions, see this page or refer to install.txt file in the downloaded Dislocker archive.

Answer 3

Very good tutorial, however there's one problem. Since the file is read only you will need to use the read-only flag:

mount -ro loop dislocker-file /media/mount

Also the -u (--user-password) option to make this much easier:

sudo dislocker -r -V /dev/sdaX -u -- /media/mount
Enter the user password:▯ 

If you want to mount again in the same folder use:

sudo dislocker -r -V /dev/sdaX -u -- -o nonempty /media/mount

(Where X should be replaced by the number of your encrypted drive, e.g. /dev/sda7)

Answer 4

Modern versions of Ubuntu/Kubuntu can decrypt BitLocker partitions without extra software.

At least, I've tested in Kubuntu 22.04 (and everything is fine).

Answer 5

I installed dislocker recently and running the script cmake . triggered errors on trying to find polarssl despite it being installed.

By chance, I eventually managed to install it: you should not run cmake under /dislocker/src directory as mentioned in the first reply (maybe it worked in the past) but should:

cd /dislocker
cmake .

Answer 6

the new package name for libpolarssl is: libmbedtls-dev

so you can install the libpolarssl compoments for cmake by installing it:

apt-get install libmbedtls-dev

Then cname and everything else will work fine