cryptsetup has partial support for bitlocker encrypted drives, but dislocker works better with dual booted machines.

Crucially cryptsetup doesn’t work with partially encrypted drives.

1cryptsetup --version
2# cryptsetup 2.7.3 flags: UDEV BLKID KEYRING KERNEL_CAPI HW_OPAL
3sudo cryptsetup --type bitlk open /dev/nvme0n1p3 windows
4# Activation of partially decrypted BITLK device is not supported.

Usage of dislocker is rather straightforward1.

1sudo mkdir -p /media/{bitlocker,Windows}
2# Get the Bitlocker drive, assumes there's only one
3export BTLDRIVE=$(blkid | grep "BitLocker" | awk '{print $1}' | sed 's/://')
4sudo dislocker -v -V $BTLDRIVE -- /media/bitlocker
5# Type might also be exfat depending on the configuration
6sudo mount -t ntfs-3g -o loop,rw /media/bitlocker/dislocker-file /media/Windows/

Cleanup is equally straightforward, where the inner drive needs to be unmounted before the outer one.

1sudo umount /media/{Windows,bitlocker}

  1. From this reference article and the Kali Linux page. ↩︎