How will the feds crack bin Laden's hard drives?

[KidWicked 0]

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More than you would comprehend.

Oh really? Why do you think I asked. There's always a bigger fish, my friend.

Coreece: "You sound like some skinheads I know, but your prejudice is with Christians, not niggers..."

[PhreeZone 20]

Yep, I know enough about Crypto to be able to explain some of the high level details, history and some of the weaknesses but I bow down to the math geeks that write the algorithms and spend months trying to figure out attacks on existing code. Those people are geeks of the highest order.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[wsd 0]

Agreed, I deal with another aspect.

[shropshire 0]

Jeeeze America ... what are you sitting around playing at? ... It's been OVER 24 Hrs now ..... Jack Bauer would have it sussed and the baddies capped by now..... Pull your collective fingers out

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[normiss 800]

Xerox made MUCH worse OS's than anything Microsnot could ever envision.
Some versions of DCL weren't much better for that matter.

[PhreeZone 20]

Don't forget about that infamous OS known as OS2/Warp. That was about the largest POS I ever had to work on.

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

[wsd 0]

You should have picked up the machine and thrown it out the window

[PiLFy 3]

I could have sworn it was 128 bit encryption... The rest of it sounds right. It also sounds like you're far more familiar w/this stuff than I am. Thank You.

[champu 1]

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Phew... For a second there. I thought someone might come back w/a useless, smart-butt reply. All just because we're in SC.

I knew I was off. Hence the question marks. I was just curious if the person I replied to remembered, & would flesh it out for us.

I apologize if my post came off high and mighty.

[PiLFy 3]

Accepted.

[Guest]

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Toss in a Unicode character in there and it really is next to impossible to crack if you are using anything stronger like AES at 256 bits or at the worst 3DES at 128. In this case since the pass code will be in a non-English format you can be assured that the dictionary is going to be customized.

Oh däng, you've divulged my secret...

Seriously though, if the password(s) is/are in Arabic it's going to make it a whole lot harder to crack. Brute force / dictionary may eventually work because they've got access to the whole system. Seems unlikely OBL put a booby trap into the mix; besides, the OS would have to manage that and if you've got the drive itself, it's possible to take it apart the way the drive recovery places do.

Like tapping on the Marauder's Map..."Reveal your secrets..."

mh
.

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

[kelpdiver 2]

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BTW if it were my encrypted hard drive it would take them forever to decrypt. I would use a randomly generated password of at least 8 characters or better.

8 characters isn't going to scare the NSA.

[piisfish 140]

maybe there is no password, just to get everyone confused

scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

[rhaig 0]

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BTW if it were my encrypted hard drive it would take them forever to decrypt. I would use a randomly generated password of at least 8 characters or better.

yes, but you don't. so currently it doesn't even take that to get to your data.

--
Rob

[metalslug 36]

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maybe there is no password, just to get everyone confused

My BIOS password on my first home PC back in 80's was "guess".
Not very secure, but good for a laugh.
When a hardware techie needed access to change some components and asked for the password, naturally I told him to "guess".
Some bemused stares were exchanged before the penny dropped.