{"id":1230,"date":"1996-11-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1996-11-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/?p=1230"},"modified":"2019-01-18T00:00:40","modified_gmt":"2019-01-17T23:00:40","slug":"footnotes-on-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/footnotes-on-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Footnotes on Security"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fortune\"><i><br \/>\nhappily, big brother is watching you, and he wears the mask of a clown<\/i><\/div>\n<p>Security has its price, and<br \/>\nthe price is user-friendlyness. To type a password each time you turn on<br \/>\nyour machine is not very pleasant, but the benefit is big. So you have to<br \/>\ndecide how much security you want. The following are some guidelines, most<br \/>\nof them are <i>crucial<\/i>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don&#8217;t use Microsoft Explorer. ActiveX-technology permits anyone to<br \/>\nget any file on your computer and maybe even to turn the computer off.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t use DOS nor Windows nor Windows95. These Operating Systems<br \/>\nhave completely zero security, and Microsoft is just so fucking<br \/>\nstupid; they have no idea about security. Besides that, 99% of<br \/>\nall virii grow and spread on these systems. Unix knows no virii.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t use any Microsoft program which features a macro-language,<br \/>\nsuch as Excel and Word. Unless you want virii.<\/li>\n<li>Use a secure operating system such as Unix or VMS. Maybe Windows NT,<br \/>\nBut take care on your applications in case of Windows NT&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>Netscape or any other browser does not need to transmit information<br \/>\nfrom you to any other site.. link the cookies to \/dev\/null or remove<br \/>\nthe write-permission.<\/li>\n<li>Use no words as password. Not even words from other languages. No<br \/>\npermutations of your own name too. Use different password for<br \/>\ndifferent machines. If you want to make it perfect, use PGP to<br \/>\ngenerate passwords.<\/li>\n<li>If you don&#8217;t need it, turn it off. If you&#8217;re standalone, you presumably<br \/>\ndon&#8217;t need to run a finger or a telnet or an ftp server. Turn it off.<\/li>\n<li>Watch you traffic. Which program transfers unwanted information from<br \/>\nyour machine to elsewhere? Take special care using software to which<br \/>\nyou haven&#8217;t the sourcecode &#8211; e.g. that Microsoft stuff.<\/li>\n<li>Apropos sourcecode: Real security needs the sourcecode. If you don&#8217;t<br \/>\nhave the sourcecode to a crucial tool &#8211; an encryption routine, for<br \/>\ninstance &#8211; nobody can know if it is secure. If it is secure, knowing<br \/>\nthe sourcecode won&#8217;t help to decrypt it (take PGP as an example).<br \/>\nDon&#8217;t trust an algorithm which is not released publicly. Never.<\/li>\n<li>Encrypt confidential Mail. Use PGP. That may not be 100% secure,<br \/>\nbut you&#8217;ll need much much time. It&#8217;s presumably the most secure<br \/>\nthing we&#8217;ve got.<\/li>\n<li>If it&#8217;s really secret, you might use steganographic techniques as<br \/>\nwell. Hide your encrypted messages in unsuspicios-looking ones.<\/li>\n<li>Make copies, backups, whatever. Most information most people got,<br \/>\nis not as critical that other people do not have to have it, but<br \/>\nyou do not want to <i>loose<\/i> it. Au contraire the army, for<br \/>\ninstance: They don&#8217;t care if they loose information, as long as<br \/>\nno one else gets it. So make backups &#8211; best encrypted.<\/li>\n<li>For data-encryption, you can use low (crypt) middle (des) or high<br \/>\n(pgp) security. These should all be available on a reasonable<br \/>\noperating system by default.<\/li>\n<li>After all, man is the biggest break in security.. people talk too<br \/>\nmuch, give away their passwords too easily, write their passwords<br \/>\ndown, use stupid passwords, use no passwords, use operating systems<br \/>\nwith no passwords, and so on and so on and so on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Okay. Now another thing&#8230; What are the threats?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Brother state might read your data (not very likely)<\/li>\n<li>Big Brother Bill might use your data for marketing (likely)<\/li>\n<li>A hacker might (ab)use your machine (unlikely)<\/li>\n<li>You might get a Virus (likely your problem, get another OS)<\/li>\n<li>You might loose data (very likely)<\/li>\n<li>Your system might crash (likely(DOS\/Windows95) to unlikely(linux))<\/li>\n<li>A person you know might mess with you data (very likely)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So you see whats the most crucial point? Make backups. Second is, use<br \/>\nA system which permits the use of a password (NOT Windows95, this is<br \/>\nridiculous). Third, do not let anyone snoop information from your machine.<br \/>\nThe rest is hackers of any colour, including the state and corporations.<br \/>\nAnd that&#8217;s a pretty little threat, according to the probability to happen.<\/p>\n<p>Ehm.. So have a nice night.<\/p>\n<p>An make backups!<\/p>\n<p>Peter Keel,<\/p>\n<div id=\"date\">1996-11<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>happily, big brother is watching you, and he wears the mask of a clown Security has its price, and the price is user-friendlyness. To type a password each time you turn on your machine is not very pleasant, but the benefit is big. So you have to decide how much security you want. The following [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1279,"href":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1230\/revisions\/1279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seegras.discordia.ch\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}