Category Archives: English

Free encryption software (2)
File encryption on USB flash drives

Free encryption softwareI 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.

I insert the USB drive and open a command prompt window (Start > Run > cmd).

PGP file encryption:

pgp -c filename

PGP file decryption:

pgp filename.pgp

PGP 2.36i in action

In conventional -c encryption mode PGP uses a symmetric block encryption algorithm (IDEA) with a key size of 128 bits. Together with a good pass phrase this is really strong encryption.

Don’t forget to securely delete the plaintext file afterwards:

pgp -w filename

Since this version of PGP was developed for DOS, it only supports 8 character file names (8.3).

PGP 2.63i is still available from Ståle’s pgpi.org site  [download].

Back in 1996 I contributed the “self-sign FAQ” to the PGP community.

Other Flash drive encrytion options for Windows, Mac and Linux

Many different free and commercial PGP versions and clones are available. See pgp.com, pgpi.org, and gnupg.org. I still use PGP 2.63i because it is an easy-to-use lightweight program that provides strong encryption and can be put on any device by simply copying one small file.

Truecrypt in “Traveller Mode” can be used to create an encrypted file container on Flash memory. Truecrypt is free and provides super strong encryption, too. However, you need to have administrator privileges on all machines that you decrypt the container on. I’m not an admin on my machine at work but need access to the passwords on my keyring there, too.

Some USB drives (SanDisk, Kingston, IronKey) have hardware encryption built in, but when it comes to encryption, I prefer to stay away from proprietary implementations.

Free encryption software (1): Introduction

Free encryption software (3): Hard disc encryption

Free encryption software (4): GNU Privacy Guard

Free encryption software (1)

EncryptionAll 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. Continue reading

The mobile Web (1)

Walter Soldierer’s blog on a mobile phoneMost 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. Continue reading

Microformats

hcard microformatMicroformats contribute to the principles of a semantic web in a very useful way. With microformats any structured or unstructured information on web pages can be given a meaning. Name and address information anywhere on the page can be tagged as belonging to personal contact information. Words like “Walter Soldierer” are meaningless to a program, but they can be turned into something the program can deal with by tagging them with microformats. Continue reading

Enterprise 2.0

Meet CharlieWeb 2.0 hit company intranets, too. In 2006 the term Enterprise 2.0 was coined to describe the implementation and use of Web 2.0 technologies (”social software”) in an enterprise. Working in a big international cooperation involves lots of communication and collaboration. Some of the social tools offer great solutions to facilitate the working together.

At a conference last week I met Simon Revell, a Pfizer UK employee who had successfully helped implementing enterprise 2.0 in his organization, mainly blogs and wikis. Very interesting presentation.

First of all I was surprised that he is an IT manager, so the IT department brought this project forward, not Marketing, not Communications. I guess it would not have been possible otherwise because there was no social software available in the organisation, Simon’s team simply set up a LAMP open source environment using Drupal and hooked it to the network. Nobody but IT can do this in a company where everything is running on Microsoft technology.

Simon had an interesting story to tell about the difficulties of kicking off enterprise 2 (”Who gave you permission to do this?”), marketing the new “corporatepunks” culture, and getting their blog known to UK and international colleagues to make it a lively communication medium.

You can find out more about Simon.

Definitely check out the “Meet Charlie” presentation created by an IT colleague of his.

Now that Sharepoint 2007 is running more and more corporate intranets, enterprise 2.0 is easier to implement, at least technology-wise. Sharepoint supports blogs and wikis, not feature-rich but good enough to get started. What are we waiting for?

How the Internet changed my life

WWWA few days ago I was asked how the Internet has changed my life, apart from it being the reason why I no longer work as a veterinarian. I spent 35 years of my life without having access to the Internet, so there are indeed a few important changes that I can talk about. If you wonder why this topic is worth a blog post you probably grew up with the Net and therefore have no idea how life would be without it.

So how did the Net change my life? Continue reading