Ask UNEASYsilence: Securing files?
Posted in Random by Dan at 5:41 pm
This post was published 3 years 3 months 11 days ago which may make its actuality or expire date not be valid anymore. This site is not responsible for any misunderstanding.Jon writes: I am paranoid about the security of my documents. I have a laptop (MacBook) and am afraid that one day I will lose or have my laptop stolen, and with that all my personal information will be public. What do you recommend to create a secure, hacker proof area on your hard drive for ’sensitive’ files to reside
Do any UNEASYreaders have any suggestions for Jon on what program to use to enable a secure area on his laptop? Is there a solution for Windows? Is Jon too paranoid? Please drop your suggestions in the comments!
How about Encrypted Disk Images from DiskUtility? You can set passwords on those and they have some sort of encryption, if I recall.
Isn’t the default OS X extremely strong? Especially in comparison to XP.
*login
4 pounds of C4 and a deadman’s switch – the only way to be sure
What’s wrong with File Vault? As long as you’re logged out when the laptop is taken, there’s very little chance of someone getting access to your files without your password.
Oh, and use a good password.
Simple, use File Vault.
Or get and use Knox.
TrueCrypt, Open-source, currently at version 4.2. Although I don’t see any Mac support yet.
File Vault… you won’t need anything else
With XP, I use blowfish for encryption. It’s rock solid. Batch encrypts well, so you can just drag and drop a folder.
Filevault causes some performance degradation (slows down your computer), although this may not be noticeable depending on how you use your computer. For small numbers of sensitive files I would suggest using an encrypted disk image as mentioned above. These can be created using the Disk Utility application in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. The encryption is 128 bit AES which should be more than adequate for most tasks.
… i got one… dont lose your computer :-D
In response to jcjohn, you don’t have to login to view files, you can start up in firewire disk mode or swap out the hard drive. If you wanted to make it harder for someone to hack your mac, protect it with an open firmware password (or EFI on intel).
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/openfirmwarepassword.html
But basically, if a person has physical access to your computer, they can view your data unless it is encrypted.
You could use FileVault- There is NO backdoor. Apple have even told this to service agents. You’re stuffed if you ever need data recovery though.
Windows: TrueCrypt does the job very good. It’s OpenSource, there is also a commandlinetool for Linux and hopefully someone is porting it to OS X with a nice GUI.
Yes, Truecrypt is great.
Nothing prevents you using it on your home computer as well, the data inside your home pc can also be stolen or used against you.
Works with Linux as well.
I use filevault to encrypt my home folder…I don’t really see any kind of performance loss (not to say there isn’t any) because I thought that it decrypted it on boot. I also have some private files that I don’t want anyone to get to if they are on my computer, so I have them in an encrypted disk image as well…that way if I’m logged in and someone gets on my mbp, then they would still need another password to mount my private files.