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How many of you use encryption?
Josh:
That is exactly what I am looking for is an application which has both a driver mode (for admin right users) and an app mode for users on a limited user account. That would be a great tool for my thumb drive.
Renegade:
I like the idea of encryption, but so far no implementation appeals.
I experimented with PGP a few years ago and found the whole mindset & workflow cumbersome. I use TwoFish encryption in some of the software I write for security related objects, and offer it as a feature for "regular" data. None of my customers avail themselves of this feature -- not sure why.
For normal correspondence I find most people don't understand what I say anyway, so it seems a waste of time.
-Ralf Maximus (December 20, 2007, 10:23 PM)
--- End quote ---
I'm with Ralf there. The "idea" is cool, but it's still far too difficult to be bothered with.
Besides, I don't have anything that could put me in jail anyways, so what do I care? Sure. Read my email to my mother! I've got some music with some pretty nasty lyrics? Wanna listen? (And no - I never keep any passwords on disk if it's possible to keep them on paper - you'd never find anything on my desk anyways! :) )
So there's very little reason for me to use encryption. Use it at the office? Huh? Silliness. If someone wanted to get into my files they could very easily. Slap on a hardware keylogger and DONE! (See below for real security.)
I do use PGP at the dayjob but ONLY because I MUST use it to communicate with some security companies. Otherwise, I'd never touch it.
When all this finally reaches the level that there's a hardware device on every computer, and I simply swipe my hadn over it for some kind of bio-metric identification, then it will finally be at a level that's easy enough to use. Otherwise, 2-factor (or multi-factor) authentication is just far too time consuming for me to play a few MP3s or whatever.
The REAL security that matters isn't encryption... It's the lock on my front door!
housetier:
I don't need a lock on my door: I possess nothing of value. This sounds like such a good argument, doesn't it?
However, using encryption or locking the door is not about having to hide something or about protecting valuable items, it is about not showing it to everyone or not letting everybody in. There is this thing called privacy, upon which people place different value. For me, it matters a lot. Others do not care about my privacy one bit, that is, they do not want to know.
So, even though I don't have anything of material value, I make sure to lock the door when I leave my apartment. And I protect my electronic communication whenever possible
Encryption matters, and it helps. It doesn't provide 100% protection against a dedicated "thief", but it very well helps against lesser villains. The same applies to your locked door: it won't keep anybody out who REALLY wants to get in. It is difficult to protect against extremes without going to extremes yourself; it is much easier to protect against "normal" and more likely "threats" using normal tools.
I am especially careful to protect myself, or rather, my data, against my government and their secret police. Recent incidents have shown that government officials are incapable of handling large amounts of sensitive data. I do not want my data to be among it when they leave USB sticks in a public library, or leave the laptop on the passenger seat over night, or send encrypted CDROMs with the key printed on the front... They show no signs of respect for other people's privacy, so I will not let them near it.
OK to sum it up: using encryption is up to everybody themselves. But consider why you do one thing (i.e. lock the door) but not the other 8) 8) 8)
CWuestefeld:
There's a lot more to protect than your data. The keys to your identity are far more valuable in the long run. Your bank account numbers, PINs and passwords give a bad guy not just the means to take your money, but also to cause you very long-term problems (like hijacking your social security account), or to destroy your reputation in any number of ways.
Locking your house is a pain in the butt, but virtually everyone does it. The dangers of not locking your data may be somewhat less likely to materialize, but pose more significant consequences.
Renegade:
I don't need a lock on my door: I possess nothing of value. This sounds like such a good argument, doesn't it?
...
OK to sum it up: using encryption is up to everybody themselves. But consider why you do one thing (i.e. lock the door) but not the other 8) 8) 8)
-housetier (January 21, 2008, 05:25 AM)
--- End quote ---
The computers I run are sufficiently locked down that I really don't need to worry about encryption. It's kind of like putting a safe inside of a bank vault. It's really quite redundant.
So for day to day operations, encryption will only slow me down and prove to be a nuisance.
Look at it like this -- why would you bother locking your bedroom door or bathroom door everytime that you leave the room? Nobody is in the house anyways, so the only thing that you're doing is creating a problem for yourself. Think of that the next time you really really really really really have to pee badly and can't find the keys to the bathroom! ;D
Encryption matters, and it helps. It doesn't provide 100% protection against a dedicated "thief", but it very well helps against lesser villains.
-housetier (January 21, 2008, 05:25 AM)
--- End quote ---
Not quite. Good strong encryption provides 100% protection against anything known to mankind for now and the forseeable future.
To verify that, calculate the keyspace of Rijndael at 256 and you'll see that it very quickly dwarfs the number of atoms in the universe. Check here on symmetric ciphers to find out. The size of the number is 1,296 billion billion billion billion digits. Rijndael is VERY secure.
But let's put those numbers into a bit of perspective...
The number of hydrogen atoms in the observable univers is around 3 * 10^79. So, let's write that number out...
30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Now... The key space of AES 256 (Rijndael) takes up space on a hard disk, so we can't actually put that number here because it's that big. But, let's look at it a tad...
Now. 1 MB is 1,000 KB. And 1 GB is 1,000,000 KB. But we'll need much larger numbers that that. But 1 billion digits is far beyond even the SI system. It goes up like this:
10^24 = yotta-
10^21 = zetta-
10^18 = exa-
10^15 = peta-
10^12 = tera-
10^9 = giga-
10^6 = mega-
10^3 = kilo-
But we're talking about:
10^1,000,000,000 for just the small number of 1 followed by 1 billion zeroes!
But the key space is 1,296 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000!
For the new and upcoming hard drives with terabytes:
1,000,000,000 / 12 = 83,333,333
So you'd need:
1,296 * 8.3 * 10^7 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 terabyte hard disks
= 1.1 * 10^11 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 * 10^1,000,000,000 terabyte hard disks
To hold the number. That's a lot of hard disks... I don't have that many at home. ;)
But just look at the first part:
1.1 * 10^11
Now, if that were money, you'd have $110,000,000,000. That's 110 billion. The numbers are staggeringly, insanely HUGE!
If that first part were simply bytes, it would fill a 110 GB hard drive! And that IGNORES the rest of the number!
Ok - I'm just blathering on at this point. But really... Those are some REALLY big numbers! I'd say AES 256 is secure, and I'd bet on 100%.
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