Craig Posted May 7, 2003 Report Share Posted May 7, 2003 If someone burgled your house and stole your computer, how strong is XP at preventing unauthorised access to your HDD?At the moment i have installed a Supervisor and a different User Password in my BIOS. So even if you find out the user password to boot, you still need the supervisor password to enter the BIOS. This is all well and good, but i know if you take the BIOS battery out for a couple of minutes everything is reset.So how good is XP at stopping access?At the moment i use the standard Windows NT/XP login dialog box where you are required to enter your username and password, with XP you can also select that users hit CTRL ALT DELETE before accessing the dialog box.So the above feature is a good design.However what if the unauthorised person installed another copy of XP over the top? All passwords are overwritten and they can gain access to your files, cant they?If not, what would stop them from just formatting your partition with XP on it and taking a chance the data is stored on another partition and then installing XP again?So what i am asking, how safe is your personal data when it is not in your possesion anymore?Does anyone know of any kind of third party software that will not allow your HDD to be accessed and possibly formatted without an authorisation key of some kind?I will be interested to see what answers / views come up with regards to this topic.Craig. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Nellie2 Posted May 7, 2003 Report Share Posted May 7, 2003 And.......what if someone took your HDD out and installed it as a secondary drive on their comp......? So it would be their o/s that would boot up and as far as I can see nothing would stop them from having a good snoop around your files!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Posted May 7, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2003 You have brought up a valid point nellie!But if need be, you can always superglue the jumpers in place so it cannot be used as a slave.Still looking for some sort of software that will prevent access to the drive when it is not authorised though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ellas Posted May 7, 2003 Report Share Posted May 7, 2003 interesting site here http://www.lockdown.co.uk/security/your_pc.php and another good reason to ditch the floppy :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Radfordin Posted May 7, 2003 Report Share Posted May 7, 2003 As a normal user of a PC you can't do this.Even glue on the jumpers will not prevent someone from getting at the data, you have to either use your drive as a master or as a slave, so they just build a computer and put the drive in the same position. If they have admin privalidges on their machine they will on the other hard drive. Anyway, put in the Win2k CD and start the recovery console and you can bypass the administrator password on XP!So what option does that leave - the most secure way is to not keep data that someone may be able to use in a fraudulent manor on your computer. You could always lock your PC down so that no-one could remove it, or at least not without causing a large amount of damage to it.The other option would be to encrypt all your files but you would have to use third party software to do so and its not going to be a simple task, I feel for most home users it would be going a little over the top.A BIOS password is useless really, its so simple to over write them either as you say by taking the battery out, or a quick change to the jumpers. One prevention is to remove the option to boot from floppy disk or CDROM. It would just slow them down thats all.The best option if you have to keep sensitve data is to keep it on removable media that can be removed and secured in a location that can't easily be got at - a nice big fireproof safe for example. Even that doesn't come without risks.Remember, most of the time its the equipment that will be stolen, anything else will be incidental. Take precautions, but don't become paranoid. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ellas Posted May 7, 2003 Report Share Posted May 7, 2003 I want to know whats craig got to hide :o Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted May 7, 2003 Report Share Posted May 7, 2003 Why not just encrypt whatever data is "sensitive" (files or folders) using something free like :-HandyBits EasyCrypto Deluxe - Version 5.5 Free of charge for personal usehttp://www.handybits.com/easycrypto.htmA high level of security - via the 128-bit key BlowFish algorithm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Posted May 8, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 8, 2003 I want to know whats craig got to hide :oBill Gates' Secrets! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Posted May 8, 2003 Report Share Posted May 8, 2003 Why not buy something like this from here so you can remove your valuble data with ease when the PC is not in use :) More info here ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Posted May 8, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 8, 2003 I like the look of that Paul.I may get one soon and install it in my new Coolermaster Case when i order it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
volt Posted May 8, 2003 Report Share Posted May 8, 2003 I don't keep anything very interesting on my machines,,but I have a friend who uses this software for some of his things,,I don't really know to much about it tho.http://www.pgpi.org/http://senderek.de/security/secret-key.protection.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted May 12, 2003 Report Share Posted May 12, 2003 Steal the computer - Well you can find the Product Key with Aida32... So you could reinstall XP. Have to have disk and stuff, but still. Removing the hard drive and sticking it in another computer - Windows will ask you to activate it as it would be in a new computer so windows would detect all the new stuff.You wouldn't get far... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madboy33 Posted May 12, 2003 Report Share Posted May 12, 2003 Or before you go outBack up all your data and smash the PC.........LOLOn a serious note if someone has such sensitive data, back it up and the use a good removal tool to take it off your PC.Remember folks, dont just delete that sensitive bit of data as someone can allways get it off your HDD very very easilymadboy33 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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