Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 135 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#71

Post by pclark »

edanm wrote: post #68
lovskogen wrote: post #35

I don't encrypt a bit — I even got no login password. I've got all my stuff on a 50GB Dropbox, so if I lose my MBP I'll just sync a new machine. Don't have anything of particular importance on my drive: design PSDs (could be secret), stock resources (icon packs, graphical elements), my music and a inspirational folder.

I do the same (happy 50GB Dropbox user). I haven't researched this, but is it possible to remotely delete a Dropbox drive? I.e. if my laptop is stolen, to use the site to wipe the data from the laptop? I assume it's possible.

Yeah it is

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#72

Post by RossM »

edanm wrote: post #66
jeremy82 wrote: post #26

As a semi-professional nude photographer I have encrypted every hard disk I own, including my laptop's. It's part of my promise to the customers to keep their photos really safe. I am using Ubuntu and LuKs on all my machines because I find it very convenient to have a superb encryption mechanism built in. As a side note, I do all my picture editing in Gimp. While this is not commom among professional photographers, i…

Is there a significant style difference between using Gimp and Photoshop? I only know Photoshop, but I've always thought of Gimp as just program for doing basically the same work. I wouldn't think there'd be a difference in the final product.

The most common complaints I've seen are that Gimp isn't Photoshop - meaning PS users who move to it dislike it due to the multi-window UI, 'wrong' key combinations.

I actually used Gimp before PS and from my perspective the only things it really misses are layer groups and layer styles. For PS users there is Gimp Shop[1] which attempts to "deweirdify" the UI to something more reminiscent of PS.

[1]: http://gimpshop.com

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#73

Post by JoachimSchipper »

edanm wrote: post #68
lovskogen wrote: post #35

I don't encrypt a bit — I even got no login password. I've got all my stuff on a 50GB Dropbox, so if I lose my MBP I'll just sync a new machine. Don't have anything of particular importance on my drive: design PSDs (could be secret), stock resources (icon packs, graphical elements), my music and a inspirational folder.

I do the same (happy 50GB Dropbox user). I haven't researched this, but is it possible to remotely delete a Dropbox drive? I.e. if my laptop is stolen, to use the site to wipe the data from the laptop? I assume it's possible.

Not against a capable attacker (who prevents your laptop from getting on the internet).

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#74

Post by sonnym »

zmmmmm wrote: post #53

Question: for developers out there, what is the overhead of full encryption on your hard drive for a development laptop? I'd love to just go the whole hog and encrypt the whole drive, but as a developer I jealously guard performance as I feel it links directly to my productivity. So I just have an encrypted Truecrypt volume where really sensitive stuff goes. But I hear everyone recommending against that.

I keep my /home partition encrypted with LUKS, which is where all my source, binaries I have had to compile myself, and even virtual machines live. I have found the overhead to be negligible for the most part and have only really noticed kcryptd using lots of cycles when doing extremely intensive operations on files. Even moving files between one encrypted volume to another over a LAN has not been cumbersome.

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#76

Post by dorianj »

_b8r0 wrote: post #56
stretchwithme wrote: post #48

A bit off topic, but making it less likely you'll lose your laptop to begin with is important. Here are some ideas. Most laptop have a special slot that accepts a cable lock. I make use of it whenever I'm in a coffee shop and have to leave the machine for more than a moment. I loop it through bag straps and my jacket too. You want to look hard to deal with. Its also a good idea to make sure your laptop requires a pas…

In some cases you can use a pair of pruning shears to cut the plastic on the kensington lock slot, then take the laptop. It's usually plastic (although some laptops do use high tension steel these days)

Plastic MacBooks have the k-lock reinforced by metal, not exactly sure what part they connect to but it's solid. MBPs are metal, hence a stronger k-lock. So a thief would have to mess up the computer pretty badly to steal it.

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#78

Post by ciupicri »

paolomaffei wrote: post #21
bobds wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An encrypted disk could also get you in a position where you have to give up your password. Be careful with your porn-filled encrypted hard drive.

Not in every country, not in Italy for sure. Anyway truecrypt-like systems gives you plausible deniability since you can have a "decoy" system. Fortunately that is not my case but I can't say I don't have any MP3s of DivXs that aren't, err, properly licensed. Edit: or cracked software, we have very high fines in Italy for using softwares without a license. I'm just saying that in case the police have a look to your l…

Do you really believe in the plausible deniability thing? It might fool someone doing a routine check, but not someone willing to really find out what's going on.

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#79

Post by tptacek »

all wrote: post #60

Before you dive too far into full-disk encryption, you might want to contemplate the consequences of this research: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9876060-38.html The paper referenced is available at: http://citp.princeton.edu/pub/coldboot.pdf From that paper, the most salient sentence for this discussion is: "On all of our sample DRAMs, the decay rates were low enough that an attacker who cut power for 60 seconds…

Remanence isn't a realistic attack in his threat model; attackers have mere minutes to get the RAM out of his system, cool it, and siphon the data off. If he's worried about losing the Plans to the Empire when his ship is captured, sure. But if he leaves his bag in the back of a cab, he'll be fine.

The notion that any "reasonably good tech thief" could pull this off is also hard to take seriously. So far as I know, there are zero (0) remanence key extractor tools in circulation. Highly skilled attackers --- many apparently in the employ of foreign governments --- have a hard enough time writing tools to extract keys from live memory.

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#80

Post by tptacek »

thibaut_barrere wrote: post #12

Yes I do (since a few months): - http://agilewebsolutions.com/knox (one vault per client) on Mac OS X, including all db data if any - http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password for all small-sized sensitive data (eg: production access, passwords etc), with an automated crypted backup I'm looking for a reliable and as seamless solution for Windows at my pace (not a big need). Something I'm also looking at is a wa…

I like Knox (which is just a wrapper around OS X's encrypted DMG functionality --- but a really good wrapper), but Knox isn't a full-disk encryption solution. The point of full-disk encryption is not having to constantly inventory your files and remember which ones need to be protected, and Knox doesn't save you from that.

Knox is handy if you already do full-disk encryption, because it lets you segregate data further (personal financials, client work, etc), so that even if you lose your computer while it's (say) on, an attacker will still need the key to yet another encrypted volume to get that data. I find it extremely useful for things I know I'm not going to need to access often; I also use it for my mail spool.

Post reply on HN