OK, not a cure for the theft itself, but a smart precaution. Following up on yesterday’s Boing Boing posts by Mark (one, two) about a Berkeley prof’s heisted notebook full of Very Important Sekrits, and other reports about swiped portables containing classified national security info — there’s no better time to think about tightening up your own data hygeine routine.
In a recent post on the Politech list about a reader who feared his computer may have been “invaded” by a federal agent during a security screening, CNET’s Declan McCullagh outlined simple steps you can take:
Much of this is in the realm of personal diary-writing and not that Politech-relevant. Except for this worrying paragraph:
“I have taken my computer through customs many times and I have never had it seized. But I’ll be damned if G.I. Jackboot didn’t walk into another room with my computer. I couldn’t see what he was doing. I suppose it is possible that US Customs now has a copy of my hard drive.
All of my stuff is password protected so perhaps that kept him from accessing anything other than the logon screen. Or perhaps there is now a bug in it that sends them a copy of everything I do.”So be sure to:
1. Encrypt your files, and preferably entire hard drive volumes, using PGPdisk or OS X’s FileVault. Might as well switch to a Mac or some non-Windows operating system while you’re at it.
2. Seriously, about the Mac thing. Police organizations are far more proficient with Windows.
3. Password-protect your computer, including a boot password.
4. Ideally find some way to verify that your computer hasn’t been tampered with. You could boot off a known-safe CD when you get home, for instance, and compare current file hashes with previous hashes saved to a CD.
Link (Thanks, Veronica and others)
Update: BB reader Dan points us to reports of FileVault vulnerability via Bugtraq:
Regarding Xeni’s post about using FileVault as a way to protect your computer, it’s worth noting that this is a less-than-secure means of doing it. On top of that, an Apple “Genius” told me, a few months after I bought my Powerbook and had it nuked by the 10.3.4 upgrade, that FileVault was basically beta and I shouldn’t use it. “Oh, well, you know, the engineers write something, but they don’t really test it that well,” she said. For the truly paranoid, use an OS with a more secure implementation. For everyone else, FileVault causes more pain than it cures. And for those interested, this Bugtraq post shows you how to find your unencrypted passwords on disk. And yes, that works for someone who yanks your hard drive and puts it in his computer.
elsinor says:
I notice the mention of NSA security guidelines and Macs specifically, and your readers might like to know that the NSA’s very own “Security Configuration Guide” for Mac OS X 10.3 is available online here.
Reader mrpink (who has an encrypted name) sez:
re: mac encryption. apparently there was no checking of Tiger, which now offers a “use secure virtual memory” option in the security preferences. i think apple is paying attention on this topic.