«

"Even the current wording of the DMCA has alarmed security researchers. Ed
Felten, the Princeton professor, told the Copyright Office last month that
he and a colleague were the first to uncover the so-called "rootkit" on
some Sony BMG Music Entertainment CDs--but delayed publishing their
findings for fear of being sued under the DMCA. A report prepared by
critics of the DMCA says it quashes free speech and chokes innovation."

http://news.com.com/Congress readies new digital copyright
bill/2100-1028_3-6064016.html

Im

I have notice that sometimes some newsgroups will get spammed with some
useless nonsense messages like the example I paste below:

"She should challenge the cautious victory and weep it into its
beach. He should mostly straighten regarding successful convincing
careers. When Ramez's effective potential taxs, Norbert summons
on the part of natural, historic obstacles. She wants to invoke
select accusations up to Mustapha's reception"

Usually it will not be only one it will be many of then in series and they
appear in various newsgroups, they do not seem ot advertise anything or
provide any link to any website, does anybody know what is this?

I am considering whole OS encryption as this seems to me the safest
choice. I use Windows XP Home and the idea is that everytime I switch on
the computer a password will be asked and the operating system with its
contents decrypted on switching it off the whole OS will be encrypted
again, and if the OS crashes it will encrypt too.

I have found two companies that offer this service Safeboot
http://www.safeboot.com and Securestar http://www.securestar.com but I
have absolutly no experience with this although I have been using virtual
encrypted disks for a long time (i.e. Truecrypt,Bestcrypt,Steganos).

The idea of encrypting the whole OS seems very smart to me as it saves
times and in my view it makes it harder to get into as virtually
everything is encrypted, I wanted to know the oppinion of the experts...

Two things I am concerned with:

1) Algorythm used to make the encryption, I do not want to use a close
source or untested algothym I will only feel comfortable with
AES,Blowfish,Twofish or something like that. I think it is what
professional cryptographers always reccomend.

2) Perfomance of the encrypted OS under normal circumstances,
email,internet,openoffice,pdf.

If anybody has used Securestar or Safeboot please let me know who it went.
Thanks.

On Fri, 28 Apr 2006 11:04:30 +0100, box_750 <> wrote:

>I am considering whole OS encryption as this seems to me the safest
>choice.

>The idea of encrypting the whole OS seems very smart to me as it saves
>times and in my view it makes it harder to get into as virtually
>everything is encrypted, I wanted to know the oppinion of the experts...

A far more practical approach would be to use the ATA password
protection that is already available in modern PC's.
(Especially notebooks).

--
Kind regards,
Gerard Bok

box_750 <> wrote in newsp.s8oyy7giai13em@localhost:

>
>
> I am considering whole OS encryption as this seems to me the safest
> choice. I use Windows XP Home and the idea is that everytime I switch
> on the computer a password will be asked and the operating system
> with its contents decrypted on switching it off the whole OS will be
> encrypted again, and if the OS crashes it will encrypt too.
>
> I have found two companies that offer this service Safeboot
> http://www.safeboot.com and Securestar http://www.securestar.com but I
> have absolutly no experience with this although I have been using
> virtual encrypted disks for a long time (i.e.
> Truecrypt,Bestcrypt,Steganos).
>
> The idea of encrypting the whole OS seems very smart to me as it saves
> times and in my view it makes it harder to get into as virtually
> everything is encrypted, I wanted to know the oppinion of the
> experts...
>
> Two things I am concerned with:
>
> 1) Algorythm used to make the encryption, I do not want to use a close
> source or untested algothym I will only feel comfortable with
> AES,Blowfish,Twofish or something like that. I think it is what
> professional cryptographers always reccomend.
>
> 2) Perfomance of the encrypted OS under normal circumstances,
> email,internet,openoffice,pdf.
>
> If anybody has used Securestar or Safeboot please let me know who it
> went. Thanks.
>



First of all, let me expand your list of possible candidates:

PGP Wholedisk (alone, as part of a suite, single-machine or enterprise)
http://www.pgp.com/products/wholedis...isk_profession
als.html

FREE Compusec (yes, it's really free and it works fine - there's also a
fancier $ version that supports hardware tokens)
http://www.ce-infosys.com.sg/CeiNews_FREECompuSec.asp

Drivecrypt plus pack (there's also an enterprise version)
http://www.securstar.com/products_drivecryptpp.php

Utimaco Safeguard Easy (and enterprise versions, etc.)
http://www.utimaco.com/C12570CF0030C...K9K5M068OBELUS

Winmagic's SecureDoc (and enterprise, etc.)
http://www.winmagic.com/product_info.../prod_info.asp

Safeboot Solo - no longer marketed! (and various Enterprise versions,
etc.)
http://www.safeboot.com/products/device-encryption/pc/

Browsing these sites will inform you that these all support mainstream
encryption algorithms (AES, etc.)

I have a mix of legit and bootleg copies of Utimaco, Safeboot,
Drivecrypt, Compusec, and PGP Wholedisk and all have worked
satisfactorily (actually I haven't yet experimented with Wholedisk) with
no noticeable slowdown of the machine (I haven't measured it but I'd
guess less than 10%). I currently use a legit copy of Safeboot Solo
(more from familiarity and habit rather than any strong advantages it may
possess).

Regards,

(Gerard Bok) wrote in news:4452032e.12201981
@News.Individual.NET:

>
On Fri, 28 Apr 2006 11:04:30 +0100, box_750 <> wrote:
>
>>I am considering whole OS encryption as this seems to me the safest
>>choice.
>
>>The idea of encrypting the whole OS seems very smart to me as it saves
>>times and in my view it makes it harder to get into as virtually
>>everything is encrypted, I wanted to know the oppinion of the experts...
>
> A far more practical approach would be to use the ATA password
> protection that is already available in modern PC's.
> (Especially notebooks).
>



It's not very convenient if your BIOS doesn't support it (most don't). And
while the system may be adequately secure for some purposes it is a near
certainty that LEOs could obtain a backdoor look at the password from the
HD manufacturer.

Regards,

box_750 <> wrote:

> I have notice that sometimes some newsgroups will get spammed with
> some useless nonsense messages like the example I paste below:

That's Hipcrime (or a troll using the tools provided by him), trying to
flood newsgroups with garbage to make them unusable.

Juergen Nieveler
--
Speed-optimizing the code?!? Don't you have a PENTIUM PRO??!!

On Fri, 28 Apr 2006, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.computer.security, in article
<op.s8owdzbcai13em@localhost>, box_750 wrote:

>Usually it will not be only one it will be many of then in series and they
>appear in various newsgroups, they do not seem ot advertise anything or
>provide any link to any website, does anybody know what is this?

Web Results 1 - 10 of about 80,900 for hipcrime. (0.47 seconds)

Hipcrime - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
HipCrime is both an anonymous Usenet vandal and the eponymous method he
devised. HipCrime is given credit for creating the earliest
web-distributed spambot ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipcrime - 18k - Cached - Similar pages

According to the headers, you are posting with 'Opera M2/8.52 (Win32, build
7721)' which I vaguely recall is another browser. There may be help available
at http://www.hyphenologist.co.uk/killfile/killfilefaq.htm. Killfiles can be
set to eliminate the garbage.

Old guy

On Fri, 28 Apr 2006 11:04:30 +0100, box_750 <> wrote:

>I am considering whole OS encryption
############################################
How long does it take to encrypt and/or decrypt an entire OS? Most
users get impatient if they have to wait 90 seconds for any PC related
activity.

donnie wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Apr 2006 11:04:30 +0100, box_750 <> wrote:
>
>> I am considering whole OS encryption
> ############################################
> How long does it take to encrypt and/or decrypt an entire OS? Most
> users get impatient if they have to wait 90 seconds for any PC related
> activity.

Hm... a stripped-down Windows XP takes about 60 MB on booting or about
100 MB at resume from disk, which is about 2 seconds with AES on a P4
2.4 GHz. Impact on swapping and temp files is negligable as well.

BTW, could you please fix your quoting?