AVetter

The new version of the free open source project called TrueCrypt supports now Mac OSX. Up to now they supported only windows and linux. The graphical user interface is very nice and simple to use. Even to manage your crypted devices or containers over the commandline is very simple and you don’t have to read extra large manual pages.

This encryption tool is very helpful to keep secret files secret, especially if you are using a notebook and you don’t want that everybody can read the data on your harddisk if you forget you notebook or someone stole it. It is not only important to protect the secure data, because up to now I don’t have such data, but I don’t want that my private data like passwords, mails, images etc. can be read without my key or password.

Some of you think that I am paranoid, but if I read or hear something like the cases in england with the stolen notebooks and the sensitive data I feel good to encrypt my data. However it is up to you to keep your privacy. You can compare it with using a firewall and a antivir program to keep “hackers” outside. I think today most of you are using both to keep your computer clean so why do you want to protect your computer from hackers (over the internet) and not from the real danger?

News: ( TrueCrypt news)

“We are pleased to announce that TrueCrypt 5.0 has been released. Among the new features are the ability to encrypt a system partition or entire system drive (i.e. a drive where Windows is installed) with pre-boot authentication, pipelined operations increasing read/write speed by up to 100%, Mac OS X version, graphical interface for the Linux version, XTS mode, ability of the wizard to create hidden volumes within NTFS volumes, SHA-512, and more.

After four years of development, during which millions of people downloaded a copy of TrueCrypt, it is the only open-source disk encryption software that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The newly implemented ability to encrypt system partitions and system drives provides the highest level of security and privacy, as all files, including any temporary files that Windows and applications create on system drives (typically, without the user’s knowledge or consent), swap files, etc., are permanently encrypted. Large amounts of potentially sensitive data that Windows records, such as the names and locations of files opened by the user, applications that the user runs, etc., are always permanently encrypted as well. …”

Do you believe that your data is secure only because you have encrypted you harddrive?

Please visit http://citp.princeton.edu/memory/ to see your data is not really secure and that everybody has access to your files if he/she has direct access to your notebook or computer.

While your computer is running the key is stored in the memory and the attacker can backup the data from the memory to a external usb harddrive (ram2usb). The status running is even if your user is logged out of the windows but you entered the encryption key before.

Now a days you have to be careful to send your mails around the world totally unsigned and unencrypted. Not only the bad terrorists or hackers are reading your mail but also every police on this earth. To be sure that only the authorized person can read the message you can use pgp to encrypt the message. Another advantage is that you can sign the message so that the person who receives it can be sure that this mail is yours and it wasn’t modified.

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