From: Greg Morgan <mac5tgm@hibbs.vcu.edu>
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 95 08:40:50 PST
To: ecarp@netcom.com
Subject: Re: Best encryption device driver for MS-DOS?
In-Reply-To: <m0rcYxl-0004IOC@s116.slcslip.indirect.com>
Message-ID: <9502091640.AA16231@hibbs.vcu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Ed Carp [khijol Sysadmin] originally said the following...

> apiece - I'd sure hate to lose them to a malicious cracker, or someone who
> would like a personal copy of my source code for their own use, or who just
> wants to "borrow" my secret key for awhile.

"Is that a PGP key in your pocket or are you just happy to see
me?" :)

The best way I can think of to protect your secret key is to
store it off of your laptop.  Put it on a floppy disk or a
PCMCIA card and keep the sucker in your pocket or in a safe.

> What do people recommend as the solution for this?  Some sort of IDEA-based
> or triple-DES-based device driver would seem to be the answer to this, but
> I'm not sure which is the "best" (most reliable, fastest, easiest to set up)
> one to use.  I like the sound of Michael Sattler's encryption driver for the
> Mac, but alas, I'm running MS-DOS :(

There's a program for DOS called SecureDrive (I think) that
uses IDEA encryption to protect hard drives.
Only problem you'll have is you'll have to repartition your
hard drive.  This is because the bootable partition needs to be
unencrypted.

What I'd setup is a small partition that's bootable and has a
version of DOS installed on it.  Then I would keep all the
software/data you want to protect on the much larger encrypted
partition.

Another thing I'd note is that while it works great with
uncompressed hard drives and floppies, I'm not certain that it
would work or work safely with compressed drives.  I haven't
tried it yet.

I'm at my school's computer lab so I can't dig up a copy of it
yet (or remember where the FTP site I got it from) but if you
want I'll try to track it down for you (if it hasn't been
posted here already).
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Greg Morgan <mac5tgm@hibbs.vcu.edu>    | "I dunno Brain, me and Pipi
Mail me for PGP Key: 0xE0D222A9        |  Longstocking?  I mean what would
Key Fingerprint : 2430 BAA4 1EE4 AA2F  |  the children look like?" - Pinki
                  3B76 3516 3DEF 5529  |
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