41–50 of 74 posts
I remember reading about that if HDD can be put in a magnetic field, it will be destroyed. If my door/passage can be set to generate magnetic field enough to destroy HDD, then as soon as authorities take out the computer out of your home, the HDD will be destroyed. But I have no idea how practical is this.
I remember reading about that if HDD can be put in a magnetic field, it will be destroyed. If my door/passage can be set to generate magnetic field enough to destroy HDD, then as soon as authorities take out the computer out of your home, the HDD will be destroyed. But I have no idea how practical is this.
Looking at conventional hard drives we see pretty strong magnets a few CM away from the platters so you'd need something freaking huge to wipe the drives passing theough a doorway.
I remember reading about that if HDD can be put in a magnetic field, it will be destroyed. If my door/passage can be set to generate magnetic field enough to destroy HDD, then as soon as authorities take out the computer out of your home, the HDD will be destroyed. But I have no idea how practical is this.
As to practically It seems quite unfeasible. First of all since magnetic forces fall off according to the inverse square law, you're going to need a seriously large magnet to for it work at say 1 meters distance or so. You're basically going to have seriously retrofit your entire house, and it's going to be very hard to hide. Secondly and more importantly even the most powerful commercial hard drive degaussers require that the drive be in contact with the magnet for up to 10 seconds to guarantee that all the data is erased, so someone just walking through a door isn't going to be in the field for anywhere near enough time.
Reminds me of Jacob Applebaum's udev rules for mouse jigglers: https://github.com/ioerror/udev_antiforensics
I built a program that automatically locks my OSX machine when I get far enough away from it. It uses iBeacon ranging and I have the beacon in my pocket. Debated on sharing with others but I never managed to clean it up enough to be proud of sharing it.
Carrying a beacon in your pocket seems like a really impractical solution if you own a smartphone.
I remember reading about that if HDD can be put in a magnetic field, it will be destroyed. If my door/passage can be set to generate magnetic field enough to destroy HDD, then as soon as authorities take out the computer out of your home, the HDD will be destroyed. But I have no idea how practical is this.
...but that basic idea did give me another one: electromagnets on a separate circuit inside the drive enclosure or laptop body.
Fail to pass a security check on schedule and the circuit is engaged, destroying the HDD.
I'm no hardware wizz although I did make a motor out of a nail and copper wire once.
I remember reading about that if HDD can be put in a magnetic field, it will be destroyed. If my door/passage can be set to generate magnetic field enough to destroy HDD, then as soon as authorities take out the computer out of your home, the HDD will be destroyed. But I have no idea how practical is this.
You probably read about it in Cryptonomicon (I know that's where I read about it), but I don't know if Stephenson made it up or not. As to practically It seems quite unfeasible. First of all since magnetic forces fall off according to the inverse square law, you're going to need a seriously large magnet to for it work at say 1 meters distance or so. You're basically going to have seriously retrofit your entire house,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used blueproximity successfully with my Linux laptop. I bought the smallest bluetooth headset I could find ($25), removed all extraneous parts, and carried it on my person (not my bag). It was so small that I didn't notice it. Effectively like two-factor authentication for unlocking my laptop. It's unwise to use your phone for this purpose, because a phone and laptop might both be swiped if you're not holding on to…
I've tried to use blueproximity at some point (mostly for convenience because I sometimes forget to lock my screen), but the range of BT devices is too large for comfort. I could be anywhere in my flat or in the medium-sized open plan office at work and the phone in my pocket would still be in range.
I like the idea of having a separate decryption device. OS reads encrypted data from hard disk, sends it over an encrypted link to your cell phone, which partially decrypts the data block (using one pass phrase), and sends it back over the encrypted link to the laptop. OS driver then finishes decrypting that block using a second key before passing it to your program. Writing back data just requires a public key, so w…