Personal encryption solution
-
A question. I'm getting more paranoid as of lately, although for good reasons. So I've decided it's time to encrypt personal information on my hard drives such as IRS returns. However, I know nothing of solutions that would allow me that. So obviously I need more information. Ideally I would prefer if there was a solution that would let me work with encrypted files transparently as if encryption wasn't there based on windows login or something. And ideally I would prefer if it also included extra stuff to aid in recovery of a corrupted encrypted archive so that if there is an error on disk I won't lose all of my stuff all at once. If that isn't possible what are my other options? Any bit of information would be useful along with personal recommendations. Oh, and Server 2008 compatibility would be a huge plus. I did a google search ang got a bunch of returns such as TrueCrypt, but it's just hard to grasp what I need/what I want and match it with PR blur. And I'm also interested in personal experiences. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
-
A question. I'm getting more paranoid as of lately, although for good reasons. So I've decided it's time to encrypt personal information on my hard drives such as IRS returns. However, I know nothing of solutions that would allow me that. So obviously I need more information. Ideally I would prefer if there was a solution that would let me work with encrypted files transparently as if encryption wasn't there based on windows login or something. And ideally I would prefer if it also included extra stuff to aid in recovery of a corrupted encrypted archive so that if there is an error on disk I won't lose all of my stuff all at once. If that isn't possible what are my other options? Any bit of information would be useful along with personal recommendations. Oh, and Server 2008 compatibility would be a huge plus. I did a google search ang got a bunch of returns such as TrueCrypt, but it's just hard to grasp what I need/what I want and match it with PR blur. And I'm also interested in personal experiences. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
I use Truecrypt becasuse I can use it from Linux or Windows. On the windows side it's very easy to set up and to set up an encrypted area. You then mount it and it shows up in Explorer as another Drive (i.e. F:\) It's only a little more complex on Linux (I use Unbuntu). It will mount the encrypted file as another directory, where every you tell it. However, there are no recovery operations that I could find for truecrypt. If the area's gets screwed up or you forget the password, it's gone. But I can also put truecrypt on my USB drive (Windows version) and mount the ecrypted area on my USB so it can be portable.
-
A question. I'm getting more paranoid as of lately, although for good reasons. So I've decided it's time to encrypt personal information on my hard drives such as IRS returns. However, I know nothing of solutions that would allow me that. So obviously I need more information. Ideally I would prefer if there was a solution that would let me work with encrypted files transparently as if encryption wasn't there based on windows login or something. And ideally I would prefer if it also included extra stuff to aid in recovery of a corrupted encrypted archive so that if there is an error on disk I won't lose all of my stuff all at once. If that isn't possible what are my other options? Any bit of information would be useful along with personal recommendations. Oh, and Server 2008 compatibility would be a huge plus. I did a google search ang got a bunch of returns such as TrueCrypt, but it's just hard to grasp what I need/what I want and match it with PR blur. And I'm also interested in personal experiences. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
-
I use Truecrypt becasuse I can use it from Linux or Windows. On the windows side it's very easy to set up and to set up an encrypted area. You then mount it and it shows up in Explorer as another Drive (i.e. F:\) It's only a little more complex on Linux (I use Unbuntu). It will mount the encrypted file as another directory, where every you tell it. However, there are no recovery operations that I could find for truecrypt. If the area's gets screwed up or you forget the password, it's gone. But I can also put truecrypt on my USB drive (Windows version) and mount the ecrypted area on my USB so it can be portable.
Joe Q wrote:
However, there are no recovery operations that I could find for truecrypt. If the area's gets screwed up or you forget the password, it's gone.
Which pretty much is the idea of encryption.... OK, first things first: Read the manual for Truecrypt. They are pretty forward about security issues. Just to name a few: Never use a journaling filesystem (including NTFS) as a host for a TrueCrypt container. The same is true for flash memory. If you want to use NTFS or a flash drive, you'll have to create an encrypted partition on it. The reason: Wear-leveling and journaled file access. For similar reasons, you'll need to disable hibernation and paging (unencrypted storage on disk) or encrypt your system device entirely.
Cheers, Sebastian -- "If it was two men, the non-driver would have challenged the driver to simply crash through the gates. The macho image thing, you know." - Marc Clifton
-
I use Truecrypt becasuse I can use it from Linux or Windows. On the windows side it's very easy to set up and to set up an encrypted area. You then mount it and it shows up in Explorer as another Drive (i.e. F:\) It's only a little more complex on Linux (I use Unbuntu). It will mount the encrypted file as another directory, where every you tell it. However, there are no recovery operations that I could find for truecrypt. If the area's gets screwed up or you forget the password, it's gone. But I can also put truecrypt on my USB drive (Windows version) and mount the ecrypted area on my USB so it can be portable.
I've read FAQ for TrueCrypt and haven't been able to find direct answer to my question. I know you can mount new volume from an encrypted file. However, what I didn't is can you dynamically resize it real time as I add more files in it? In other words suppose right now I only have 100MB encrypted data in a 100MB encrypted file mounted as letter P. Can I drop more files in volume P and have it automatically resize? Or do i have to unmount drive, resize it somehow and mount again. In other words what is the mechanism for resizing the encrypted file/volume?
-
I've read FAQ for TrueCrypt and haven't been able to find direct answer to my question. I know you can mount new volume from an encrypted file. However, what I didn't is can you dynamically resize it real time as I add more files in it? In other words suppose right now I only have 100MB encrypted data in a 100MB encrypted file mounted as letter P. Can I drop more files in volume P and have it automatically resize? Or do i have to unmount drive, resize it somehow and mount again. In other words what is the mechanism for resizing the encrypted file/volume?
JazzJackRabbit wrote:
However, what I didn't is can you dynamically resize it real time as I add more files in it?
As far as I can tell, you can't. What I had to do was when I ran out of room I created another, larger encrypted area and moved the data. And then got rid of the first area.
-
Joe Q wrote:
However, there are no recovery operations that I could find for truecrypt. If the area's gets screwed up or you forget the password, it's gone.
Which pretty much is the idea of encryption.... OK, first things first: Read the manual for Truecrypt. They are pretty forward about security issues. Just to name a few: Never use a journaling filesystem (including NTFS) as a host for a TrueCrypt container. The same is true for flash memory. If you want to use NTFS or a flash drive, you'll have to create an encrypted partition on it. The reason: Wear-leveling and journaled file access. For similar reasons, you'll need to disable hibernation and paging (unencrypted storage on disk) or encrypt your system device entirely.
Cheers, Sebastian -- "If it was two men, the non-driver would have challenged the driver to simply crash through the gates. The macho image thing, you know." - Marc Clifton
Sebastian Schneider wrote:
Joe Q wrote: However, there are no recovery operations that I could find for truecrypt. If the area's gets screwed up or you forget the password, it's gone. Which pretty much is the idea of encryption....
In other words...Backup your data!
-
A question. I'm getting more paranoid as of lately, although for good reasons. So I've decided it's time to encrypt personal information on my hard drives such as IRS returns. However, I know nothing of solutions that would allow me that. So obviously I need more information. Ideally I would prefer if there was a solution that would let me work with encrypted files transparently as if encryption wasn't there based on windows login or something. And ideally I would prefer if it also included extra stuff to aid in recovery of a corrupted encrypted archive so that if there is an error on disk I won't lose all of my stuff all at once. If that isn't possible what are my other options? Any bit of information would be useful along with personal recommendations. Oh, and Server 2008 compatibility would be a huge plus. I did a google search ang got a bunch of returns such as TrueCrypt, but it's just hard to grasp what I need/what I want and match it with PR blur. And I'm also interested in personal experiences. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
-
A question. I'm getting more paranoid as of lately, although for good reasons. So I've decided it's time to encrypt personal information on my hard drives such as IRS returns. However, I know nothing of solutions that would allow me that. So obviously I need more information. Ideally I would prefer if there was a solution that would let me work with encrypted files transparently as if encryption wasn't there based on windows login or something. And ideally I would prefer if it also included extra stuff to aid in recovery of a corrupted encrypted archive so that if there is an error on disk I won't lose all of my stuff all at once. If that isn't possible what are my other options? Any bit of information would be useful along with personal recommendations. Oh, and Server 2008 compatibility would be a huge plus. I did a google search ang got a bunch of returns such as TrueCrypt, but it's just hard to grasp what I need/what I want and match it with PR blur. And I'm also interested in personal experiences. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
Personally, I wouldn't like to be encrypted. First, I'd have to worry about remembering the public key, the private key, and especially not mixing them up. Second, I'd look like random garbage to most people, which might hurt my social life (a bit).
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighistmodified on Friday, June 27, 2008 11:15 AM
-
A question. I'm getting more paranoid as of lately, although for good reasons. So I've decided it's time to encrypt personal information on my hard drives such as IRS returns. However, I know nothing of solutions that would allow me that. So obviously I need more information. Ideally I would prefer if there was a solution that would let me work with encrypted files transparently as if encryption wasn't there based on windows login or something. And ideally I would prefer if it also included extra stuff to aid in recovery of a corrupted encrypted archive so that if there is an error on disk I won't lose all of my stuff all at once. If that isn't possible what are my other options? Any bit of information would be useful along with personal recommendations. Oh, and Server 2008 compatibility would be a huge plus. I did a google search ang got a bunch of returns such as TrueCrypt, but it's just hard to grasp what I need/what I want and match it with PR blur. And I'm also interested in personal experiences. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
-
Sebastian Schneider wrote:
Joe Q wrote: However, there are no recovery operations that I could find for truecrypt. If the area's gets screwed up or you forget the password, it's gone. Which pretty much is the idea of encryption....
In other words...Backup your data!
Joe Q wrote:
In other words...Backup your data!
And do not encrypt your backups unless you are 100% sure you will not loose the encryption key.
John
-
Joe Q wrote:
However, there are no recovery operations that I could find for truecrypt. If the area's gets screwed up or you forget the password, it's gone.
Which pretty much is the idea of encryption.... OK, first things first: Read the manual for Truecrypt. They are pretty forward about security issues. Just to name a few: Never use a journaling filesystem (including NTFS) as a host for a TrueCrypt container. The same is true for flash memory. If you want to use NTFS or a flash drive, you'll have to create an encrypted partition on it. The reason: Wear-leveling and journaled file access. For similar reasons, you'll need to disable hibernation and paging (unencrypted storage on disk) or encrypt your system device entirely.
Cheers, Sebastian -- "If it was two men, the non-driver would have challenged the driver to simply crash through the gates. The macho image thing, you know." - Marc Clifton
Sebastian Schneider wrote:
Wear-leveling and journaled file access.
I am confused what you mean about this. Most flash drives today will wear level your data inside the drive itself so it makes no difference at all how you write the data to the drive.
John
-
JazzJackRabbit wrote:
However, what I didn't is can you dynamically resize it real time as I add more files in it?
As far as I can tell, you can't. What I had to do was when I ran out of room I created another, larger encrypted area and moved the data. And then got rid of the first area.
I found this blurb on TrueCrypt website which sounds exactly what I'm looking for: Dynamic Dynamic TrueCrypt container is a pre-allocated NTFS sparse file whose physical size (actual disk space used) grows as new data is added to it. Note that the physical size of the container (actual disk space that the container uses) will not decrease when files are deleted on the TrueCrypt volume. The physical size of the container can only increase up to the maximum value that is specified by the user during the volume creation process. After the maximum specified size is reached, the physical size of the container will remain constant. Note that sparse files can only be created in the NTFS file system. If you are creating a container in the FAT file system, the option Dynamic will be disabled (“greyed out”). Note that the size of a dynamic (sparse-file-hosted) TrueCrypt volume reported by Windows and by TrueCrypt will always be equal to its maximum size (which you specify when creating the volume). To find out current physical size of the container (actual disk space it uses), right-click the container file (in a Windows Explorer window, not in TrueCrypt), then select Properties and see the Size on disk value. WARNING: Performance of dynamic (sparse-file-hosted) TrueCrypt volumes is significantly worse than performance of regular volumes. Dynamic (sparse-file-hosted) TrueCrypt volumes are also less secure, because it is possible to tell which volume sectors are unused. Furthermore, if data is written to a dynamic volume when there is not enough free space in its host file system, the encrypted file system may get corrupted. Are you saying you've never been able to get it to work?
-
A question. I'm getting more paranoid as of lately, although for good reasons. So I've decided it's time to encrypt personal information on my hard drives such as IRS returns. However, I know nothing of solutions that would allow me that. So obviously I need more information. Ideally I would prefer if there was a solution that would let me work with encrypted files transparently as if encryption wasn't there based on windows login or something. And ideally I would prefer if it also included extra stuff to aid in recovery of a corrupted encrypted archive so that if there is an error on disk I won't lose all of my stuff all at once. If that isn't possible what are my other options? Any bit of information would be useful along with personal recommendations. Oh, and Server 2008 compatibility would be a huge plus. I did a google search ang got a bunch of returns such as TrueCrypt, but it's just hard to grasp what I need/what I want and match it with PR blur. And I'm also interested in personal experiences. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
I'll add my vote for TrueCrypt also. I have a 15Gb extended partition on one of my laptop drives that I use for keeping work related stuff on. It has the majority of our source code and several databases of information that our competitors would really like to have... The only caveat is that when I mount the encrypted volume, I have to restart the SQL Server service, so that it can find the new drive and data files. Once SQL Server is happy, it is completely transparent to the OS. TrueCrypt is an excellent product and is exactly what you need.
Sunrise Wallpaper Project | The StartPage Randomizer | The Windows Cheerleader
-
A question. I'm getting more paranoid as of lately, although for good reasons. So I've decided it's time to encrypt personal information on my hard drives such as IRS returns. However, I know nothing of solutions that would allow me that. So obviously I need more information. Ideally I would prefer if there was a solution that would let me work with encrypted files transparently as if encryption wasn't there based on windows login or something. And ideally I would prefer if it also included extra stuff to aid in recovery of a corrupted encrypted archive so that if there is an error on disk I won't lose all of my stuff all at once. If that isn't possible what are my other options? Any bit of information would be useful along with personal recommendations. Oh, and Server 2008 compatibility would be a huge plus. I did a google search ang got a bunch of returns such as TrueCrypt, but it's just hard to grasp what I need/what I want and match it with PR blur. And I'm also interested in personal experiences. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
PGPi, use true crypt on the drive and encrypt the really juicy stuff with pgp. Then to make it really secure use TOR for anonymous surfing from public wifi nodes using a directional antenna.
Need a C# Consultant? I'm available.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway -
Joe Q wrote:
In other words...Backup your data!
And do not encrypt your backups unless you are 100% sure you will not loose the encryption key.
John
John M. Drescher wrote:
And do not encrypt your backups unless you are 100% sure you will not loose the encryption key.
If you don't encrypt it, put your backups in a safty deposit box. Otherwise, what's the point of encryption. I just use the same, simple, 43 character password (with upper, lower, special, and numeric characters...no whole words, common numbers only run through a formula...you know...simple) for backups and original encryptions. :cool:
-
I found this blurb on TrueCrypt website which sounds exactly what I'm looking for: Dynamic Dynamic TrueCrypt container is a pre-allocated NTFS sparse file whose physical size (actual disk space used) grows as new data is added to it. Note that the physical size of the container (actual disk space that the container uses) will not decrease when files are deleted on the TrueCrypt volume. The physical size of the container can only increase up to the maximum value that is specified by the user during the volume creation process. After the maximum specified size is reached, the physical size of the container will remain constant. Note that sparse files can only be created in the NTFS file system. If you are creating a container in the FAT file system, the option Dynamic will be disabled (“greyed out”). Note that the size of a dynamic (sparse-file-hosted) TrueCrypt volume reported by Windows and by TrueCrypt will always be equal to its maximum size (which you specify when creating the volume). To find out current physical size of the container (actual disk space it uses), right-click the container file (in a Windows Explorer window, not in TrueCrypt), then select Properties and see the Size on disk value. WARNING: Performance of dynamic (sparse-file-hosted) TrueCrypt volumes is significantly worse than performance of regular volumes. Dynamic (sparse-file-hosted) TrueCrypt volumes are also less secure, because it is possible to tell which volume sectors are unused. Furthermore, if data is written to a dynamic volume when there is not enough free space in its host file system, the encrypted file system may get corrupted. Are you saying you've never been able to get it to work?
JazzJackRabbit wrote:
Are you saying you've never been able to get it to work?
I'm saying I've never tried. It's not what's important to me.
-
John M. Drescher wrote:
And do not encrypt your backups unless you are 100% sure you will not loose the encryption key.
If you don't encrypt it, put your backups in a safty deposit box. Otherwise, what's the point of encryption. I just use the same, simple, 43 character password (with upper, lower, special, and numeric characters...no whole words, common numbers only run through a formula...you know...simple) for backups and original encryptions. :cool:
Joe Q wrote:
I just use the same, simple, 43 character password
Just as long as you remember the key and that whatever software you used still exists when you need your data. Maybe I am paranoid but I am more scared at loosing the encryption key (or software problems preventing recovery) than someone stealing personal data from my backups at work.
John
-
Joe Q wrote:
I just use the same, simple, 43 character password
Just as long as you remember the key and that whatever software you used still exists when you need your data. Maybe I am paranoid but I am more scared at loosing the encryption key (or software problems preventing recovery) than someone stealing personal data from my backups at work.
John
John M. Drescher wrote:
Maybe I am paranoid but I am more scared at loosing the encryption key (or software problems preventing recovery) than someone stealing personal data from my backups at work.
I'm more worried about what work people will think about my personal information. They don't want me blogging because I may accidentally reveal some information I'm not suppose to. I asked if I could talk to people. They hesitated then said it was ok. I don't have any work data in my encrypted area (I don't think about work on personal time) but "Nothing is so simple that it can't be misinterpreted"
-
A question. I'm getting more paranoid as of lately, although for good reasons. So I've decided it's time to encrypt personal information on my hard drives such as IRS returns. However, I know nothing of solutions that would allow me that. So obviously I need more information. Ideally I would prefer if there was a solution that would let me work with encrypted files transparently as if encryption wasn't there based on windows login or something. And ideally I would prefer if it also included extra stuff to aid in recovery of a corrupted encrypted archive so that if there is an error on disk I won't lose all of my stuff all at once. If that isn't possible what are my other options? Any bit of information would be useful along with personal recommendations. Oh, and Server 2008 compatibility would be a huge plus. I did a google search ang got a bunch of returns such as TrueCrypt, but it's just hard to grasp what I need/what I want and match it with PR blur. And I'm also interested in personal experiences. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
Burn the critical info to several cd's with some form of encryption, confirm you can read it. Lock them away in different places such as a safety deposit box or bury it in the backyard (whatever) then remove the info from your computer entirely and use a utility to overwrite the empty space and then you don't need to worry about it anymore.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it." -Sam Levenson