File Security

[5614]

I was coming up with a way to make a file (with no particular extension) as secure as possible.

 

• Password protect computer (start-up, BIOS, username)
  
• Password protect file (if possible)
  
• Remove extension so they'd have to know or guess the extension before they could open it.
  
• Place file in one of those 'computer safe' programs.
  
• Make it hidden in attributes (spose it might fall my grandma!)
  
• Split the file into several smaller files, you'd need the correct file compiler to rebuild it.
  

Now an obvious one it to encrypt it... but how could I go about encrypting a file with no extension? (or I suppose I could add an extension before encryption), in which case what programs are there that encrypt files?

 

What else is there?

 

(dont assume it's a .exe so I can't necessarily just add a whole voice recognition part to the file, it could just be a plain .txt, the file extension has deliberately not been specified)

[Dak]

wouldnt it be easyer to copy the file to cd, delete the file from your pc, and then hide the cd? sounds alot easyer than doing all that, plus i guess you could also encrypt the file and remove the extention before coppying it to cd for added security.

[5614]

Yeah, or you could blast your computer into space in a 100m thick titanium case

 

You could eat your HDD and say "over my dead body"

 

I just wondered if you had a file you wanted secure but you wanted it on your computer and accessable too!...

[Dak]

oooh, you sarcastic little bitch!

 

ok, you could store it on a virtual harddrive, ie an internet site, then it wouldnt actualy be on your computer, but if you wanted to acess it you could log on to the site, so it would be virtually as easy to use as if it was on your pc. completely unfindable as long as no1 knows the website of your virtual harddrive (delete temp internet, history etc).

 

i guess other than that, you could give it a misleading name and put it somewhere odd, like calling it boot.ini.old, and putting it in the same folder as the boot.ini file. it will look like a boot.ini backup, the .ini.old extention will tell the pc to ignoor it, and all you have to do is change the extention back to whatever it should be to run the file.

[5614]

oooh, you sarcastic little bitch!

LMAO, you live in the UK, right I'm coming for you .... nah, that really made me laugh for a while !

 

The website idea I didn't think was amazing, unless they were coming for you! the internet is less safe than your computer, although fair enough they wouldn't know the URL.

 

And a misleading name is an obvious one I miss.

[Dak]

The website idea I didn't think was amazing, unless they were coming for you! the internet is less safe than your computer, although fair enough they wouldn't know the URL.

 

do you have some kind of paranoia issue or are you some kind of international spy? [\shifty eyes emoticon wearing a private eye's hat]

 

i guess you could open the file in note pad. sometimes the first few lines will be a line of variables that are nessessary for the program to run the file, and by deleting them the file wont open. if you cut and past the variables into, for example, a word file, then to open the file youd have to first open it in notepad, then open the word doc, then copy the variables and paste them into the file, then save the file, then you could open it, although all of this seems like a lot more effort than just putting a cd into a drive whenever you want to use the file.

 

and none of this will stop someone who actually knows what their doing with pcs from acessing your data, (exept the copying to cd and burying in guarden idea)

 

LMAO, you live in the UK, right I'm coming for you .... nah, that really made me laugh for a while !

 

oh yeah. well, you know what contry i live in, but i know what city you live in; so i'm comming to get you. bitch

[5614]

See you in the Your name thread

 

The idea of converting to a .txt file and removing part of the coding is a brilliant idea.

 

And honestly I was just genuinely interested, if I wanted to a secure a file there's already a bunch of passwords and I'd have removed the extension... there's only really one file I have which is kinda secret, but that's not even stored on a computer (on a top secret storeage medium!)

[Dak]

The idea of converting to a .txt file and removing part of the coding is a brilliant idea.

 

but bear in mind, if the data is in any way text based, then the person whos after your data might simply be able to open it in note pad and read the data

[5614]

You can convert any file to a .txt file though, (try it with an image, it works, but you get coding).... by removing 13 charachters from the 18th line and adding them to another .txt file.... moving, renaming, de-file extenioning them etc you'd have personally split the file.... no one could open it without knowing where it was split [18th line] and what was split [the 2nd new .txt file] and what was in that 2nd new .txt file. It's quite safe!

[Dave]

I would have thought this was pretty simple: just grab yourself a copy of GPG/PGP, generate a public/private key pair and keep the private key on a CD or floppy. Then you can encrypt your file with however much security you want.

[Dak]

ahh, no, but making a cd is not allowed

[Dave]

Securing your physical media is very much a part of data security. GPG would obviously be insecure if you couldn't keep the private keys off of the hard drive.

[Dak]

ya, but when i suggested something involving cds i gotta heavy dose of sarcasm, apparently its not an option in this case.

[5614]

Yeah' date=' or you could blast your computer into space in a 100m thick titanium case

 

You could eat your HDD and say "over my dead body"

 

I just wondered if you had a file you wanted secure but you wanted it on your computer and accessable too!...[/quote']

 

Well said Dak

 

I was indeed wondering about securing files on your HDD.... as said in the quote, I can secure a storeage medium... wondering about stuff on the HDD.

[Dave]

It's not going to be secure unless you can encrypt it properly. The only encryption technique that I know of which isn't one-way and is "secure" is RSA, and for that to be secure, you need a public key to be stored somewhere else where it can't be found.

[Nevermore]

add it to a very large .mpq file, put the mpq in a hidden folder, and password protect the mpq