Re: [OM] [OT] Encryption advice

[Chuck Norcutt]

I read something very brief about Lavibit's shutdown but certainly not 
the disconcerting detail in the Guardian link below.
But, as I said, I'm not afraid of TrueCrypt because whatever the gummint 
wants to know about me can be found much easier than looking on my computer.
As to ordinary protection of my financial transactions from people who 
would like to take my financial assets away from me I've decided to do 
something simpler than using Linux.  I tried several Linux distributions 
but they all gave me problems in one way or another.  They either 
couldn't print to my Windows printers or couldn't talk over a wireless 
connection.  I'm sure there were simple (like device driver) fixes for 
these problems but I didn't want to spend the next year becoming a Linux 
guru in order to get a printer to work.
My solution has been to re-purpose the old Dell WinXP laptop by 
installing not Linux but Windows 7 and dedicating that old machine to 
financial transactions.  I deal with 2 banks and 2 investment houses and 
that machine will never ever know of any other than those 4 URLs.  I 
assume it will never get infected with malware since it will never ever 
visit any other web sites.  That may not be true but, if my banks are 
infected, I think all is lost to me anyhow.  I may be naive since it 
will be running on a Windows LAN but I think I have a better chance of 
keeping it clean in an environment I'm familiar with.  One thing that 
will help is that it will normally be turned off most of the time.  :-)
Chuck Norcutt


On 6/27/2014 8:08 PM, Sandy Harris wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 3:07 PM, Chuck Norcutt
> <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > The bottom line is that TrueCrypt (far from being ugly) is actually a
> > beautifully written application.  You can find the source, excecutables and
> > documentation on GRC's page above.  Version 7.1a (the last complete version)
> > has been running unchanged since Feb 2012.  There's no reason why we
> > shouldn't trust it... well, as long as you're not paranoid over the
> > possibility of NSA backdoors.  ...
> When TrueCrypt was withdrawn from distribution, there was considerable
> speculation about the reason. One popular theory was that the project
> had been hit with a gov't demand that would damage security for all
> users and were legally prohibited from revealing that, so they shut
> down much as Lavabit did:
> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/20/why-did-lavabit-shut-down-snowden-email
>
> I'm inclined to believe that theory because there have been reports
> Ed Snowden was using TrueCrypt, but there is no solid evidence
> for it.
>
> > I've downloaded it and will try it out.  Thanks, I feel like I'm back on
> > track.
> > > No advice, but... to read some of the background behind the TrueCrypt
> > > decison, you might go through some of the recent articles found by:
> > >
> > > <http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=truecrypt>
> Good suggestion.
>
> An alternative would be to take an older surplus machine, or
> buy one at a garage sale, or get a Rasberry Pi (under $100),
> put Linux on it, create an encrypted disk with the built-in tools,
> and share it to the Windows box with Samba.
>
> For me, that would take a few hours and I'd be confident I
> could make the Linux box reasonably secure. If you don't
> know Linux it would take much longer and not justify high
> confidence.
--
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