not sure if this belongs in the hacking section but im looking to try encrypting my hard drive. i plan on reformatting my computer very soon so figured id encrypt it my question though is whats a good program to do this for high level encrypting and will that prevent a person in my house hold from extracting my hard drive plugging it into an external and using windows or another operating system from being able to see all of my data? also if I decide to move it into another system or something will i still be able to see and access my things using some kind of pass word on a different PC?
is there a performance hit at all? I plan on encrypting my ssd btw. my mechanical drives only store video games.
Windows encryption is no good; the encryption key is loaded into ram when it boots (someone with proper skill can then extract it from ram.)
Depending on your processor the encryption might have no hit in performance at all. Should look for cpu that supports ACE , AES etc; some more expensive workstation mobo's will have built in encryption systems from bios point already.
as protection from theft encryption is not good at all... If they steal you pc/laptop/tablet usually they would not care for your hdd - so they would wipe it - and if they do care for data they would crack it and windows encryption is no good at all there.
The best protection for theft that you could implement is intel anti-theft technology (which is full of holes but still quite interesting, it implies hardware lockdown and geolocation if internet is present) other one would be hiding inside your computer its own gps transmitter. When its stolen all you have to do is notify police with gps id and location... quickly recovering hardware...
im not worried about police or government being able to access my things. Im just worried about semi tech geeks like me being able to access my things. My issue is that the people im currently living with are sneaky. Also ive had an ex try to delete all of my personal files (pictures and videos of my entire life) so i also want to protect that on my external drive whotu having to wipe everything..
I would just use Bit-locker it would work just fine for you and is fairly simple to implement maybe some type of offsite data back up would be good to thwart the effort of those pesky exes.
Does anyone know the current status of the TrueCrypt audit?
Get linux, debian would be a good choice. In the install option choose LVM with encryption.
Bit locker costs, alot. And if the chip onboard is screwed, you are too as user.
I don't think that the developers of truecrypt are supporting the software still. The download page is about migrating to bitlocker.
You're correct, the devs no longer support it, and stated it was insecure. TrueCrypt passed the first stage of the audit with no major vulnerabilities, and was supposed to have the second stage of the audit this summer. I just haven't heard anything about the progress or status of it.
OR you use predator. Just have the key on your flashdrive and they computer wouldn't be able to run without the key present. The only downside is you can't let that fall into the wrong hands. So keep a microwave nearby, and a backup key in a safe-deposit box or out in the woods somewhere.