This article should be of interest to anyone who is cyber security conscious–which should be everyone, in the present era:
Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore [1].
Now consider the pointed lesson of the XKCD site [2].
Are you now concerned? …then use:
Diceware [3]
and
Truecrypt [4]
The main features of Truecrypt:
- Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
- Encrypts an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive.
- Encrypts a partition or drive where Windows is installed (pre-boot authentication).
- Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
- Parallelization and pipelining allow data to be read and written as fast as if the drive was not encrypted.
- Encryption can be hardware-accelerated on modern processors.
- Provides plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:
- Hidden volume (steganography) and hidden operating system.
Take the time to increase your password security and your general computing security. Someday you may be very glad that you did!
Thanks, – Michael Z. Williamson (SurvivalBlog’s Editor at Large [5])