Bart
Member
Registered: 19th Aug 02
Location: Midsomer Norton, Bristol Avon
User status: Offline
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quote:
According to the BBC, UK officials are in talks with Microsoft about creating back doors into Windows Vista.
Microsoft is currently using BitLocker Drive Encryption through a chip called TPM (Trusted Platform Module) on upcoming computers motherboards. The main aim of the chip is to ensure people are not pirating media. Hard disks in Windows Vista will be effectively encrypted using an unknown key.
The UK government is concerned that this unknown key will prevent any digging out of encrypted data from criminals machines.
Because of this the home office is currently talking to Microsoft about ways of creating back door keys for agencies to be able to view data from machines.
Microsoft has not confirmed whether or not this is likely to happen or not.
[/wuote]
This is not good... not good at all 
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willay
Moderator
Organiser: South East, National Events
Premium Member
Registered: 10th Nov 02
Location: Roydon, Essex
User status: Offline
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simple, use a different app to encrypt your data. Easy.
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John
Member
Registered: 30th Jun 03
User status: Offline
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Its more for businesses to stop the harddrives being ripped out a machine and then the data being accessed in another machine apparently.
Not a big problem at all.
BBC are ghey.
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sukhwant
Member
Registered: 8th Sep 04
Location: Leeds
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by willay
simple, use a different app to encrypt your data. Easy.
such as??
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Cosmo
Member
Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
User status: Offline
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simple...get an apple!
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Bart
Member
Registered: 19th Aug 02
Location: Midsomer Norton, Bristol Avon
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Cosmo
simple...get an apple!
Macs already have this feature built in lol
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Cosmo
Member
Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Bart
quote:
Originally posted by Cosmo
simple...get an apple!
Macs already have this feature built in lol
haha, oh no!
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Dan B
Member
Registered: 25th Feb 01
User status: Offline
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Macs have another security feature, aswell......no bugger is stupid enough to steal one, it's like stealing a Robin Reliant! 
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Ian
Site Administrator
Registered: 28th Aug 99
Location: Liverpool
User status: Online
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As I understand, this is to stop data being accessed without proper authenticationl. Presently, a drive may be removed from a stolen computer and put in another one to which the user is able to log on, and the files can have their ownership assumed by the host computer.
This new technology means that if you remove the drive, the data won't work elsewhere. So if the Police seize a computer looking for evidence they will be unable (or at least it will be far more difficult) to read data. This is not about reading your data while you're on the Internet.
If the key is in hardware then quite why you can't just throw a fresh install of Windows on I'm not clear.
Nothing is safe anyway with the right amount of time and processing power. Just means investigations will happen as quick as they do currently, instead of requiring massive amounts of computing power on the case for months. It will all break eventually.
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Tim
Site Administrator
Registered: 21st Apr 00
User status: Offline
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All our work laptop harddrives are encrypted anyway. There's plenty of tools around to do complete harddrives.
I know encryption is crackable given the compute resources, but 256-bit encryption isn't crackable unless you find a weakness in the algorithm -- to brute-force it would require more energy that 10^8 hypernovas in order to even count through the possible combinations (useless fact of the day)...
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