The Disappearing Desktop - It's Real This Time

[Alex Tweedly]

Dan Shafer wrote:

> First, there are several technologies that work around this problem.  
> I am working with a startup that has a USB device that handles this  
> issue nicely and I know of a couple of others. The problem is hardly  
> intractable.
>
I'll be glad to hear about them when they are available - but today 
there is no apparent solution. I believe this is a hard problem. Today 
many Internet cafes don't allow you to attach USB devices. It needs to 
be more than a read-only storage device (since that could be read, 
copied and faked). And it must not require any communication from the 
keyboard or other system-based input devices.

I'm sure it's a tractable problem - but I don't believe it's easy, and I 
think it will take a lot to convince me it's secure.

> Second, what happens when you lose your laptop or have it stolen?  
> This happens with shocking frequency these days and it's getting  worse.

Nothing. I never use any "remember this password for me" features (for 
the important passwords), I have key files in encrypted directories,

> I'd be a lot more concerned about THAT security issue than  with the 
> loss of data over relatively secured and busy Internet wires  and 
> signals.

I'm not concerned about Internet wires and signals - I happily use 
Internet banking over public wifi - it's getting the data from the 
keyboard to the wire, or account info from the wire to the screen that 
worry me.

-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



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