Re: Folder encryption

Hello Robin,

I am late to this thread and, since I do not see the entire
conversation, am likely missing a few details. My apologies if I repeat
anything.

The first question that pops into my mind is why you are looking for a
3rd party encryption utility? Windows XP comes with built-in
encryption. This is Encrypting File System (EFS). I use it all the time
and it works well.

Is "128 bit blowfish" encryption secure?

Relatively, yes. Blowfish is an older symmetric block cipher. EFS uses
Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is also symmetric cipher. AES
is newer than Blowfish and has a larger key space (256 versus 128). As
a general rule, the larger the keyspace, the more secure the
encyrption.

What does it mean to disable Windows data execution protection?

I would be very wary of disabling DEP, as you are weakening your
overall security posture.

From Microsoft: "Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is a set of hardware
and software technologies that perform additional checks on memory to
help prevent malicious code from running on a system. ... DEP can help
block a class of security intrusions. Specifically, DEP can help block
a malicious program in which a virus or other type of attack has
injected a process with additional code and then tries to run the
injected code."

Regards,

J Wolfgang Goerlich


Related Links:

Best practices for the Encrypting File System
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223316

A detailed description of the Data Execution Prevention (DEP) feature
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352

.