Security Basics mailing list archives

Re: Laptop Encryption & Hibernation


From: Barrie Dempster <barrie () reboot-robot net>
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 11:28:56 +0100

On Thu, 2004-09-23 at 23:17, Kevin Snively wrote:
The protection would (or should) be NTFS (as I mentioned). This would
require a password to access the system or even the hardrive by itself put
into another machine 
No.

NTFS has nothing to do with password access to the system, it doesn't
offer any encryption at all and CAN be viewed without logging onto the
stolen machine. (Unless you meant EFS which does offer encryption for
NTFS systems, but I don't beleive you did)

(now we wont even go into the fact that it would
blue-screen to Hades unless it was totally compatible with the original
computer). 

Ehm you are joking right?
If you have taken a hard drive from one system to put into another you
aren't required to boot from it. You can install it as a secondary
drive, boot from the first drive containing another OS and happily read
everything on the ntfs system. This can be done from any OS that can
read NTFS.


As for the BIOS password comments from others in the thread.....
BIOS passwords offer ZERO security if the machine has been stolen, the
battery popping / jumper method is one way bypassing it, but a BIOS
isn't ANY use if the hard drive is no longer attached to that system.
The OP asked about enterprise level security solutions and the list
offered him BIOS passwords? I can't believe subscribers to this list
need the limitations of this explained to them.

The REAL options is encryption (which is what the OP asked about)

Listen to Ghaith Nasrawi, he provided very good options. EFS is also an
option to look at.

On Thu, 2004-09-23 at 09:49, Ghaith Nasrawi wrote:
Read this
http://www.tgc.com/dsstar/04/0727/108590.html

and check these products
http://www.safeboot.com/safeboot.asp?page=news&area=pressdetails&id=43
http://www.findbiometrics.com/viewnews.php?id=1454
http://www.ce-infosys.com.sg/CeiNews_FreeCompuSec.asp
-- 
Barrie Dempster (zeedo) - Fortiter et Strenue

  http://www.bsrf.org.uk

[ gpg --recv-keys --keyserver www.keyserver.net 0x96025FD0 ]

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