Virtual TPM for Parallels and bitlocker anytime soon?

A

Alex M

Bit poster
I'm a Mac user at a primarily Windows company. I use Parallels to virtualize Windows and do a lot of my day to day. For a new project we're being required to move to Bitlocker. I read a bit online about workarounds to get Bitlocker working without a TPM, however, they're pretty involved and a less than ideal solution.

Is there any chance there might be a virtual TPM in Parallel's future? My understanding is TPMs are integrated into the vast majority of PC hardware nowadays. Seems like something Parallels should support.
 
Personal opinion: TPM is evil, and the more it gets supported the more it becomes a requirement.
 
Some of us want the TPM. Fro some of us, it's a requirement based on the sensitivity of the data we put on our machines. So for those of you that don't need it, fine, don't use it but your statement that supporting it makes it a requirement makes no sense.
 
The more it becomes prevalent the more it becomes used in detriment of other more reasonable solutions.
 
BitLocker Working Now (Win8)

I'm on Win8 Enterprise with Parallels Desktop for mac 8 (Build 8.0.18354). I turned BitLocker on, fully expecting for it to run through machine requirements and tell me no go. I don't have the TPM chip enabled.

However BitLocker started up, asked me for a password and encrypted the C: drive. I have restarted a couple of times, and it all works, asking for the BitLocker password upon start.

I ran tpm.msc from the command line and it came up with no TPM, so I don't think Parallels has added a virtual TPM. This must mean Win8 now allows BitLocker without a TPM.
 
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On Windows 7, there seems to be no option to enter a password for bitlocker encryption. The USB key option doesn't work, the bitlocker boot screen cannot find the usb key even though it is already mounted in Parallels.

The trick that worked for me was to write bitlocker key to a virtual floppy image instead. This is what I did:

1. Create a floppy image on the OSX terminal using:
dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024 count=1440 > ~/Desktop/floppy.fdd
2. Configure your virtual machine, add a floppy device, and set it to mount the floppy.fdd file automatically.
3. Turn on bitlocker via command line (Bitlocker GUI doesn't work because the GUI only searches for USB removable media).
manage-bde -on C: -rp -sk A:
4. Restart Windows. (You may see a quick bitlocker boot screen flicker before it automatically boots into windows - that's a good sign.)
5. Bitlocker will now start encrypting your drive.
 
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