Privacy software

[Aquila]

it really depends on from who you wish to protect your data... Encryption at 128 I beleive is beyond regular law enforcement.... But they can subpoena any ISP and ask them to identify who is behind such and such IP address (that's one way they know from whose computer that a particular threatening email came from for instance).

Being anonymous while surfing is quite another story than protecting your files on your computer... I'd say is quite impossible to surf anonymously... using regular browzers and not too savy knowhow.

Of course I don't think that we are always being watched. Aside from the occasional "honney pot' site to flush out pedophile I'd say is rather safe to surf for porn... I don't think software like zeroknowledge are really anonymous... Isp would not allow that because they have legal obligation to keep log and trace.

Cheers, and remember: you're being watched... but who cares! speaking of being watched, have you heard about the holliwood escort/madame (fanny or something like that) that has just oppened a clothing store... Girls gets a discount of lingerie if they agree to dress up in a special boot with a web cam, and of course you can become a member of the boutique's web site and watch

!

 

[Aquila]

sorry to reply to my own ... but I remember where I left my latest news about Echelon... The famout NSA sniffer that intercepts email, but also phone calls and faxes... especially overseas...
Read on at : http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9912.html#3

There is a smaller version for ISP called carnivore, just for email that is more law enforcment friendly

Cheers and two thumbs up for the good folks at NSA who by know know where to go when in Montreal !

 

[HornyBoy007]

I see that we have a bunch of security experts on the board

Well, I think that law re. cryptography apllies only to exchanged data. So, we're limited to 128 bits cryptography when we do our daily ecommerce transactions, but I guess we can use stronger cryptography to protect our files.

If you want to bug echelon, you just need to include in your email sig. some keywords like : iraq, ben laden, bush... This is a kind of spamming the system with junk mail, as all these messages will be intercepted and some precious CPU time will be used to analyze them

 

[traveler0099]

About the best software around that I know of is Evidence Eliminator.

Wipes out every file you can imagine and will clean your hard disk by writing random data over deleted files as many times as you specify. They claim to wipe HDDs to a degree that is beyond US Department of Defense standards.

I purchased it about 2 years ago for about $150 USD.

 

[Peeping Tom]

Don't worry about that, 128 bit is more than enough. RC5-64 was a distributed computing project designed to break 64 bit encryption. The result was that after about four years, at 80+ % of the entire keyspace checked, the key was finally found. This involved thousands of computers working around the clock to find the key (btw distributed computing is a type of hobby). It can be reasoned that, barring extreme luck, that the system was essentially impossible to break, within any reasonable timeframe. The project was guaranteed to break the system, as it was designed to check the entire keyspace, but note the impracticality of actually doing so. Only sheer luck would have one find the key within even hours.

RC5-72 is underway. Minimum reasonable estimate, given the level of participation, is about twelve years assuming a probability of 0.5 making a score within half the keyspace.

Originally posted by HornyBoy007

Reding the previous, interesting posts, I was wondering how strong is the cryptography that comes with windows XP (for encrypting files), is it just 128bits, or do they use a much stronger crypto system?

 

[HornyBoy007]

That is difficult for our poor PCs not for those quantum computers hidden in some desert. Just kidding.

 

[montrealfan]

F**king spyware

Hi all,
I installed ad-aware 6.0 Personal with the latest update from the Internet, found a handful of programs that track cookies, and link modifier (I think winshow is 1 of them), anyway, I purged them out of my system, rebooted and reran ad-aware again to make sure none was found the 2nd run.

Still, some hidden freaking spyware is lying dormant in my computer that makes attempt to 1) change my homepage 2) replacing links on the page I am viewing. Do you know what else I can do to get rid of them for good? They are like Freddy Krugger and I am about to call my lawyers to sue their asses if I found out who released these programs. (I am sure they are not based in the US)

Btw, I use "history kill" to hide my track from the next user. Good advice on the file encryption software.

Cheers,
MF

 

[nerd]

just say no to messy-drugs

Guys, if you running microsoft anything, you might as well just use your real name. Linux or Mac OS X on your desktop and you have a chance.

One hoped that XP was better, but it is installed and configured too poorly in most cases. Never connect to the Internet as administrator. What, you mean you have to run WindowsUpdate that way? well, end-of-game, you see.

If you have XP, consider creating a new local account for your hobby, and that way you'll have a different context for bookmarks, cookies, etc. and you can claim it was back-orifice or something

If you are running 9x, well, god be with you. everyone else is.

I was going to assume this was about network privacy, but I forgot that you don't have privacy on your desktops yet.

None of the "password" options in any word processor or office suite have any real meaning at all.

CoolAmadeus, "1344 bit security" is nonsense. You might have 128 or 256 bit session encryption with 1024 or 2048-bit public keys, but that doesn't get you 1344-bit security.

Aquila has gone to lots of effort - but not running Outlook (or HTML mail readers at all) or IE would be more effective.

Network security would be best if merb would install opportunistic encryption (see www.freeswan.org ), but since there is no windows client as yet, it won't help many.

 

[CoolAmadeus]

1344 bits security

Hello Nerd,

I am just curious, where do you think I got the notion of 1344 bits security, that I made it up??? Just for your information, take a look at the manufacturer's web site of the product I am using (DriveCrypt 4.0): www.drivecrypt.com , which will redirect you to www.securestar.com , and read!

I have to agree with you on one thing tough, whatever the version of Windows you have, unless you use very special tricks to not store any cookies or login information, your handle will be stored somewhere in your registry, if not in other places. I am personally running a separate windows machine using "VmWare" (www.vmware.com), and I restore my snapshot after every usage, so I know NOTHING is stored. But I agree that for most mortals, this is not a possibility, so I didn't mention it before.

Take care!

CA

 

[HornyBoy007]

I installed and tried spybot tonight. I've been using adaware for more than 2 years now. I first run spybot and it found some spyware that I cleaned up. then I installed spybot and its updates then I run another test. Spybot found 39 new objects, pretty amazing. Spybot seems to be better than Adaware (free release). Here is the link to download it

http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?lang=en

I will keep both programs for now, but I would get rid of adaware in the long-run.