Walter Soldierer’s Blog

Since version 5, released on February 8, 2008, Truecrypt can encrypt an entire drive or partition, including the one that contains the operating system installation. Truecrypt’s implementation of strong drive encryption is particularly impressive. Listen to Security Now episode 133 for more information. Finally high quality free open source software is available for encrypting an entire hard disk. I immediately encrypted my Laptop’s hard disk. Truecrypt 4 was already installed and all private data was stored in an encrypted volume. Full disk encryption with pre-boot authentication is a much better solution though. Now the entire hard disc contains nothing that anyone could ever read. The encryption ran as a background process while I was surfing the web and took 2.5 hours on an 80 gb hard disk.

Don’t leave the data on your portable computer unprotected. Download Truecrypt for your PC, Linux box or Mac.

Free encryption software (1): Introduction
Free encryption software (2): File encryption on USB flash drives
Free encryption software (4): GNU Privacy Guard

I am a PGP user since 1996 and I still use Ståle Schumacher’s international DOS version 2.63i to encrypt files on my USB flash drives. All I need is PGP’s small exectutable file (pgp.exe, 237.737 kb). On first use, PGP will create a second small file that contains some random seed data for the encryption. With this minimal setup, PGP will warn you about a missing configuration file, but this does not affect the strength of encryption. The USB drive on my key ring contains an encrypted passwords file and pgp.exe, providing easy access to the many cryptic passwords I use. All I need is one strong master pass phrase to decrypt the file and get instant access to more passwords than I could ever remember.

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If a mobile device provides a good browsing experience, users will use it to access the web. This statement is clearly supported by Net Applications’ operating system market share data for devices accessing the web in February 2008. Apple’s iPhone outperformed Windows mobile (CE) devices more than 2 times. This is particularly impressive because only about 4 million iPhones compete with 20 million Windows CE devices. In addition there are hundreds of millions of Nokia phones, for which the market share (Series60 OS) is reported to be only 1/7 of the iPhone figure. In other words, 4 million iPhones access the web almost 2 times more often than all Windows mobile and Nokia devices together. (more…)

All data on my laptop’s hard drive is encrypted. If the machine gets stolen, no one will be able to boot the operating system without entering the correct pass phrase beforehand. Nothing on the drive looks like a file of has any readable information. My letters, photos, and all other private information are no more than an cryptic stream of random bytes.

I also set up encrypted hard disk drives for private data on my desktop machines at home. I once had to send a defective hard disk back to the manufacturer for repair. A nosy mechanic would not have found anything other than a boring C: drive with Windows XP and some programs on it.

On the USB mass-storage device that I always carry on my key ring at least one file is encrypted. It contains many different login passwords and other secret information that I need to have access to no matter where I am.

Great free software is available to encrypt entire hard disks, partitions, folders, files, and emails. This is the first post of an encryption series that will explain what software I use on my Windows XP machines. The programs I use are available for Linux and Macintosh computers, too. And they are all open source which to me is the most important reason for not using commercial software for encryption. I trust that many cryptographers have already inspected the code to make sure that it does not contain any weaknesses or backdoors.

Free encryption software (2): File encryption on USB flash drives
Free encryption software (3): Hard disc encryption
Free encryption software (4): GNU Privacy Guard

Most mobile phones have some sort of Internet access built in. However, not many owners of mobile devices use them to surf the web. There are several obvious reasons. First of all, carriers still charge too much for internet access. The WWW user experience on mobile phones is variable, to say the least. Access fees will go down, and I am sure that mobile flat rates will be the predominant pricing model soon. It will take some time though until most mobile phones belong to the 3rd generation and until mobile web standards are sufficiently well defined and implemented to support consistent web page rendering on the mobile web.

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Seit Juni 2004 speist unsere Photovoltaikanlage Strom ins Netz ein, ca. 3.500 kWh pro Jahr. Es stellt sich die Frage ob das verglichen mit anderen Anlagen oder Regionen viel oder wenig ist. Zum Glück gibt es einen Service, der einem diese Frage beantwordet. Der in Aachen ansässige Solarenergie-Förderverein Deutschland e.V. (SFV) betreibt auf seiner sehr informativen aber auch sehr kritischen Website ein Programm zur bundesweiten Ertragserfassung von PV-Anlagen. (more…)