Category Archives: Security

GDPR Craziness / DSGVO Irrsinn

Today I decided to make this website „GDPR compliant“. No more Cookies, Google Analytics, personal data processing, and log files. Not sure if that will protect me from potential legal consequences of not being GDPR compliant but this is a simple personal home page after all and I’m afraid it is all I can currently do to protect myself. I would otherwise need to do all sorts of things, like publishing a long water proof privacy policy, explain the purpose of all cookies, provide an opt out technology for them. I already registered and installed an SSL certificate to protect your personal data contained in comments and contact requests.

If you want to comment on one of the blog posts, you can use the site’s contact form. If you tell me that you want your comment to be public, I will consider adding it to the post in question.


Heute habe ich mich entschlossen, diese Website an die Datenschutz-Grundverordnung anzupassen. Keine Cookies, kein Google Analytics, keine Verarbeitung personenbezogener Daten und keine Logdateien. Dies ist eine einfache persönliche Homepage und ich brauche das alles nicht wirklich.
Ich hoffe, dass die Website damit den Anforderungen der DSGVO entspricht, kann mir aber nicht sicher sein, ob mich das in unserer schönen regulierten Welt tatsächlich vor allem juristischen Fallstricken und Abmahnwellen schützen wird.
Ich fürchte, das ist alles, was ich derzeit tun kann, um mich zu schützen. Ich würde sonst viel Zeit investieren müssen, wie zum Beispiel in das Verfassen einer langen wasserdichten Datenschutzrichtlinie. Auch müsste ich den Zweck aller Cookies erklären, eine Opt-Out-Technologie dafür bereitstellen. Ein SSL-Zertifikat ist bereits installiert, um persönlichen Daten in Kommentaren und Kontaktanfragen zu schützen.

Wer einen der Blogposts kommentieren möchte, sollte also das Kontaktformular der Website verwenden. Der Kommentar kann dann gegebenenfalls zum betreffenden Beitrag hinzugefügt werden.

Free encryption software (3)
Hard disc encryption

Truecrypt[Update Nov. 11, 2014: The Truecrypt developers no longer support this product]

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. Continue reading

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