Any security person worth their salt would know that you don't plug a drive retrieved from a malicious source onto a network connected system. At least not connected to the uber-secure network.  Why did Q plug the drive into a system attached to the secure network? Why didn't he take the extremely simple and obvious precaution of disconnecting from the network before trying to read the drive?
123034
In the movie  Shouldn't Q like connect Silva's computer to a secure line or something, considering that he was a known cyberterrorist? Isn't there any sort of internal protocols for the networking system?
111252
A few months back when I buggered up my netbook and then booted into it to get information from it using a live USB. (Thinking that was 10.10)   When I was copy/pasting this to another USB at no time was I required to enter my user name or password to access this information. Why and how was that possible? Shouldn't that not be possible? This was information from the 'home' including documents, pictures, music, videos and some other locations.  This does not sound secure at all, is there any way that I can ensure this cannot happen again and that user name and password would be required to access information on my installed Ubuntu computer when booting on that computer from a live USB/CD/DVD?
78253
Windows allows the  of certain files or folders. I currently have a Windows folder that is set to "encrypt contents to secure data". (The Windows partition is NTFS.)  If I mount this drive under Linux, is there anyway to decrypt the contents of the directory so that I can read the files without having to reboot into Windows?
15059
I am investigating the vulnerability to  and I think I understand how and why this sort of attack works.  What I don't understand is why Lighttpd and NginX are not affected (according to the same article as linked above). What do they make so different?
66713
I am looking for the shortest comprehensive way to explain to people that are trying to use DRM as a technology to prevent users from using their data in some fashion deemed undesirable, why their solution cannot work by definition.  Ideally I'd like something that:   Covers why technically it is impossible to have people access local data, but only in such-and-such a way Imparts an understanding of why this is, to avoid follow-on "But what if" rebuttals Is intuitive enough and short enough that even a politician (j/k) could grasp it   When faced with this situation I try to be clear and concise, but I usually end up failing at least on one of these points. I'd really like to have a 'stock' answer that I can use in the future.
36726
One of our users seems to have been hit by . As a result, he has a hard drive full of encrypted files. The ransom-ware claims to have used public key encryption on  the files.  If we know exact contents of some of the files prior to them being encrypted, would it be feasible to use those files to discover the private key?
25929
In recent release of Windows 10 we could see a new feature named wifi sense, which raised the following security threat as per this  :     This brilliant new feature, which Microsoft has dubbed Wi-Fi Sense,   doesn’t share your WiFi network password per se — it shares an   encrypted version of that password. But it does allow anyone in your   Skype or Outlook or Hotmail contacts lists to waltz onto your Wi-Fi   network — should they ever wander within range of it or visit your   home (or hop onto it secretly from hundreds of yards away with a good   ‘ole antenna!).   As per faq :     For networks you choose to share access to, the password is sent over   an encrypted connection and stored in an encrypted file on a Microsoft   server, and then sent over a secure connection to your contacts’ phone   if they use Wi-Fi Sense and they’re in range of the Wi-Fi network you   shared   From  :     First, a bit of anti-scaremongering. Despite what you may have read   elsewhere, you should not be mortally afraid of Wi-Fi Sense. By   default, it will not share Wi-Fi passwords with anyone else. For every   network you join, you’ll be asked if you want to share it with your   friends/social network   From the above excerpts it's unclear whether Windows 10 shares wifi details with  my contacts; So my questions were few :  Does it really shares WiFi details with my contacts since many articles states it's shared &amp; it's not shared.  If it's shared how can I prevent it?
50801
When you unplug an USB drive without unmounting, your OS warns you about how dreadful could be such operation for your devices (I'm on OSX).  I usually follow the advice, unmounting before unplugging, but it happened many times (thousands) that, at the end of my tasks, I just unplugged (Hd storage, Cell phones, etc..) and I never ever noticed corrupted data on my devices. Am I lucky or can this annoying warning just be ignored?
112828
There's a lot of good advice around about avoiding connecting to unsecured wireless networks, and using a VPN (for all traffic) if you absolutely must use one.  What seems to be missing from this advice is the gap between when you connect to the unsecured wireless, and when you've got your VPN connection up and running. This can be a pretty short period, but a lot of software will detect the new network (via some OS event, I guess) and immediately start attempting to reload/reconnect/etc. So the very first thing that happens is various login details and connections occur before you have time to connect to the VPN (since this requires the unsecured wireless first). Likewise, if the VPN connection goes down for some reason, the default route will return to the unsecured wireless.  So is there any way to avoid this unsafe gap? For example, blocking all data that's not going to the VPN server by default.  I'm hoping for a built-in solution rather than 3rd party firewall software, but keen to hear about any options that truly close this gap in security.
53073
Is there a way to do full disk encryption after the install?  I have Ubuntu 11.10 installed with /home encrypted but really need the whole drive encrypted.  I would really like to do that with out a re-install.  Is there anyway to do that?
52108
I don't want to reset the password nor delete it. I need to know the password. What can be done? Specific software for that? Easier way of getting the password from inside a non-admin account through Windows itself or reboot is needed? Thanks  EDIT: Also, where are the password files stored? If I get in the system files with another bootable OS, I can read those and get the pwd from it.   EDIT: I don't want to reinstall Windows, I want the password.
98716
I've read on some websites that it's bad to defrag an ssd. But I'm reading on this website now and one person was like "You didnt do any harm its just not necessary to defrag it." I feel like that's wrong since every other website I've read says it will damage the ssd.
80151
I've just had an issue pop up related to my drives.  First things first, I was working in my case when I clumsily shifted the foot of the case off of my desk. Case shifted and hit the desk somewhat hard, but only fell an inch or two. It had been properly shut down so this may not have anything to do with the issue.  After booting up, I noticed that when playing a video from my F: Drive (Seagate), it produced a whine, almost a chirping sound coming from the hard drive bay. I think I may have heard this before the drop, but quieter.  Fearing impending failure I downloaded GSmartControl and inspected the drive information. The Seagate drive displayed a high Raw Read Error Rate, as well as a high Seek Error Rate.  I've read some of these values can be high on Seagate drives from the start. This drive is about 6 months old and the producer of the noise.  I also checked my Toshiba drive, which came with a refurbished prebuilt I bought about a year ago. It showed more normal SMART data, but displayed some concerning statistics (2 "Mechanical Start Failures" and 2 "Reported Uncorrectable Errors").  Both of the drives passed the basic SMART test, but the noise was quite alarming. It would stop as soon as a paused the video and start right up again as soon as I resumed playing.  Here is an album with 3 photos of the SMART data, the Seagate did not display statistics.  Could I please have help interpreting the SMART data, and whether this may indicate an impending failure?   Thank you for your time.   Here are images of the SMART data.
32944
Friend of mine dropped a HDD on the floor and every since the HDD won't mount when connected. It just makes this spinning noise inside for about two rounds and then it goes quiet. Obviously, he wants to salvage the data but I said to him I'll see what I can do knowing the chance of recovery is pretty slim with HDD that won't mount. Was I right about this ? Is there anything I can try I may not know about ? I tried to run gparted on it as I know gparted can detect disks that aren't mounted but connected. But no luck.
121170
A wise guy who goes by the name of NickN maintains a lenghty  on his views about building a powerful computer (directed towards playing Microsoft's Flight Simulator X, a very demanding piece of software).  He sums up points about SSD drives somewhere, and he concludes the list as follows:     DO NOT PARTITION SSD    He doesn't elaborate on this unfortunately, but I wonder why he says this. What are the drawbacks of partitioning an SSD? (Partitioning in this context meaning >= 2 partitions)
1599
There have been reports yesterday about a new security vulnerablity:   Lucian Constantin (2015-12-16). .  CSO Online. Patrick Allan (2015-12-16). . Life Hacker. Swati Khandelwal (2015-12-16). . The Hacker News.   The news reports all say things like the vulnerability can "allow a hacker to install malware on a locked-down Linux system", can "bypass all security of a locked-down Linux machine", and can "bypass password protection on your computer".  The actual vulnerability itself is CVE-2015-8370, and has been written up by one of its discoverers:   Hector Marco and Ismael Ripoll (2015-12-14). . CVE-2015-8370.   Whilst the news reports are hyperbolic, talking of vulnerabilities in Linux, the report by Marco and Ripoll is very technical for the non-programmer to absorb, descending into colourized source code or GRUB2 and 40-character-long strings of numbers and letters within the first page.  I'm just an ordinary "security guy".  I keep my applications and operating systems up to date with security patches.  So, without the hyperbole from the news reports, and without baffling me with source code and hexddumps:   Is there any immediate action that I should take?  Is there any immediate action that I can take? What is the risk to my personal systems at home? What is the risk to my servers at work?  If someone had IPKVM or ILO access, for example, could this be exploited?
67357
I need to make two hard drives unreadable. Unfortunately, I have some constraints which make this harder than usual (in particular, they rule out the answers to ):   I don’t have a computer to mount the drives and erase them (weird, right?) I don’t have a strong magnet I don’t have the right tools (screwdrivers …) to properly dismantle the drives I don’t have access to corrosive chemicals I don’t have a sledgehammer.   How can I destroy the drives with the least monetary / material requirements?  The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is to pinch off the connection pins, and perhaps destroy the circuit board using a small hammer.  I realise that given all the above constraints this may be too much to ask. I’m willing to settle for whatever I can get. I don’t have to fulfil legal obligations of data security, and the data on the discs, though personal, is not critical. I don’t want to prevent the FBI from reading my discs, just the next door wannabe MacGyver.