Category: Privacy & Encryption

Dear Editor, It’s nice that you published an article about system and data security. People need to be aware. Overconfidence in encrypted communications however is a disaster waiting to happen. The author wrote: “Another benefit of the way Linux deals with encryption is that any information that is read or written is directly transferred between RAM and the container: any piece of information that exists outside of the computer’s memory is always encrypted.” This is flawed logic as demonstrated by recent attacks on target and other retail giants. RAM scraping is actually pretty old news. I also heartily disagree with …

Welcome to all the brave souls that didn’t scream and/or quickly scroll on when reading the title. I know a fair percentage of SurvivalBlog readers are concerned about OPSEC, but what about your electronic OPSEC? Is it as good as it should be? As good as it could be? I promise you won’t have to read the entire submission but you should take a look at the first few paragraphs to determine if its something you need to address. If you do, you can always try to find some trusted help in securing your systems. During the second half of …

Dear Editor, A long tome ago, I looked at diceware as Michael Z. Williamson mentioned (love that XKCD cartoon), and I don’t find it quite as robust as I would like for password generating (I have one diceware-ish password I use for convenience, but used a couple of foreign words and specific capitals as well). Creating a series of simple words that forces the attackers to use a brute force attack on it anyway, made me want to go out and find out a better way to find brute-force-resistant passwords. I found one (essentially, only one) really good password generator …

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. Now consider the pointed lesson of the XKCD site. Are you now concerned? …then use: Diceware and Truecrypt 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 …

Dear Mr Rawles, Since I have worked for a few decades now with computers as programmer, installing systems and building/repairing computers, I read last week’s articles/letters on a digital libraries with interest. Though most information provided is correct, some possibilities weren’t discussed, while others may not be entirely clear or confusing to the uninitiated. So, in addition to the previous postings, here is my take on ‘digital libraries for dummies’: Putting together a digital library is a good idea and I have one too. It contains everything from books to reference diagrams, user manuals and SurvivalBlog archives. However it can …

Mr. Rawles,  I came across this today and thought it might be useful to other SurvivalBlog readers. It is called  JustDelete.me. From the web site: ‘Many companies use dark pattern techniques to make it difficult to find how to delete your account. JustDelete.me aims to be a directory of URLs to enable you to easily delete your account from web services.” Essentially it is a listing of links to various web companies where you can delete your account. Currently 129 companies are listed and the site owner has a method for submitting others for inclusion. – Clark H.

JWR; I had noticed some mention of Tor and I believe there was some mention of alternatives to Tor as well, to better protect one’s privacy on the web.  I really hate to say this, but, anonymity on the net really only exists as fiction these days.  Tor has had problems with it’s exit nodes for a very long time and there was a lot of talk in the “penetration testing” community about the FBI using Tor to set up stings last summer.  One can use a VPN (virtual private network) that claims to keep it’s users secrets secret, but …