Digital Security: Securing Your Laptop
By Franke Schein
February 17th 2015
Imagine this scenario:
You've been very active in the political arena speaking out against the creeping eradication of civil liberties by the Obama Administration. Many of your Facebook posts depict the president and his cabinet as Marxist infiltrators.
Suddenly, a close family friend passes away, and you have to attend the funeral across the country; but due to bad weather, it's quicker to get a plane ticket, and fly there the same day.
While going through the airport security check, your laptop is seized by TSA inspection officers. You are told that the laptop will be returned in a few minutes.
You are confident that TSA will not be able to access your laptop, because you have a very strong password installed.
Behind The Scenes At TSA:
It doesn't matter how good your password is. The password is stored in the operating system itself, and a novice agent can get into your laptop in just a few minutes.
All that is required, is for the agent to power up the laptop, and using a series of COMMAND PROMPTS during the boot up phase, have the ability to reconfigure the laptop to start from HIS OWN HARD DRIVE, thereby eliminating the need for a password. The contents of your entire hard rive can be copied and stored for future inspection.
TAKE STEPS TO SECURE YOUR HARD DRIVE:
Transfer the operating system, documents, pictures, and other information to an external hard-drive.
Reconfigure the laptop to BOOT FROM THE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE, instead of the laptop operating system.
Encrypt the external hard-drive with an encryption program such as PGP, or TrueEncrypt.
Use a VERY STRONG PARAPHRASE as the password for the external hard-drive. For example;
"Wind Magic Sunlight Beauty" are four unconnected words that would be difficult for anyone to guess, or for a Brute Force Password Cracking program to break into without considerable time and resources.
A cool way to remember the password, is to use words that invoke a mental image. In this case, the thought of a "wind" storm followed by the "magic" of "sunlight" "beauty" would make the paraphrase easy to recall. Capitalizing each First and Last letter is also a good idea.
As an added layer of security, each file can also be encrypted. Of course, a different paraphrase must be used for each File Folder.
Sensitive email addresses, and telephone numbers can be encrypted, and then pasted into a word document for retrieval at a later time.
Another Method:
Remove the hard drive from laptop, and install a fresh-clean operating system. BUT--make sure that the entire hard drive is securely erased to prevent computer forensic programs from rebuilding index points.
www.frankeschein.com
By Franke Schein
February 17th 2015
Imagine this scenario:
You've been very active in the political arena speaking out against the creeping eradication of civil liberties by the Obama Administration. Many of your Facebook posts depict the president and his cabinet as Marxist infiltrators.
Suddenly, a close family friend passes away, and you have to attend the funeral across the country; but due to bad weather, it's quicker to get a plane ticket, and fly there the same day.
While going through the airport security check, your laptop is seized by TSA inspection officers. You are told that the laptop will be returned in a few minutes.
You are confident that TSA will not be able to access your laptop, because you have a very strong password installed.
Behind The Scenes At TSA:
It doesn't matter how good your password is. The password is stored in the operating system itself, and a novice agent can get into your laptop in just a few minutes.
All that is required, is for the agent to power up the laptop, and using a series of COMMAND PROMPTS during the boot up phase, have the ability to reconfigure the laptop to start from HIS OWN HARD DRIVE, thereby eliminating the need for a password. The contents of your entire hard rive can be copied and stored for future inspection.
TAKE STEPS TO SECURE YOUR HARD DRIVE:
Transfer the operating system, documents, pictures, and other information to an external hard-drive.
Reconfigure the laptop to BOOT FROM THE EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE, instead of the laptop operating system.
Encrypt the external hard-drive with an encryption program such as PGP, or TrueEncrypt.
Use a VERY STRONG PARAPHRASE as the password for the external hard-drive. For example;
"Wind Magic Sunlight Beauty" are four unconnected words that would be difficult for anyone to guess, or for a Brute Force Password Cracking program to break into without considerable time and resources.
A cool way to remember the password, is to use words that invoke a mental image. In this case, the thought of a "wind" storm followed by the "magic" of "sunlight" "beauty" would make the paraphrase easy to recall. Capitalizing each First and Last letter is also a good idea.
As an added layer of security, each file can also be encrypted. Of course, a different paraphrase must be used for each File Folder.
Sensitive email addresses, and telephone numbers can be encrypted, and then pasted into a word document for retrieval at a later time.
Another Method:
Remove the hard drive from laptop, and install a fresh-clean operating system. BUT--make sure that the entire hard drive is securely erased to prevent computer forensic programs from rebuilding index points.
www.frankeschein.com
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