encryption
Friday, November 24, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by robint
(7 messages posted)
On another matter (not wishing to hog the stage)
Ive researched the knotty problem of encrypting and securing ones precious data and
tried various products and all the hype that proliferates (my current favourite is
good old Winzip and if anyones interested in my experiences with this I'll post).
My real question here is one of "how secure is your data really" because
a) your vault file can be readily identified and deleted by a vandal (but there
are ways of disguising your vault to deter the opportunist)
b) more worrying is that encryption produces by its nature a very compact file.
I experimented with a vault and, using a hexeditor, changed one of the bytes arbitrarily
to simulate a hard drive fault say. This made the file totally unrecoverable. We
all know that hard drives can develop physical errors and the DOS is designed to
identify and bypass these by noting them as unusable in the FAT table. Nothing is
perfect. Notice how dodgy some CDs can become after a short time. I wouldnt dare
put an encrypted file on a CD. A thumb drive seems a better bet (perhaps it could
be physicaly disguised as an innocuous household object to deter the casual thief.
Just cos im paranoid doesnt make me wrong.
Anyone any comments
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