Extreme Security Suggestions?

["John Gay" <John_Gay@3com.com>]

Hi,
I am wondering what is the recommended way to secure a sizeable volume (0.5-2GB
) of confidential data such that it is non-retreivable/unusable even in the
event that a hacker has gained user level or <shudder> root access?

I have thought of some kind of encryption; but I haven't seen anything fast
enough to make that practical given that I would have to re-encrypt the whole
data set after working on it. I also thought of simply having a dedicated
partition for the data in question and unmounting it when I leave the machine.
But I suppose a hacker with root access could easily remount it. Which leaves
the option of having a dedicated physical drive and unplugging it when I leave.
But that is annoying since I would have to leave my machine open all the time.
:(. So any other suggestions, comments?

Thanks!
Timothy
PS: I have no intention of letting a hacker gain access to my machine; but its
nice to be prepared for the worst. ;).



This sounds like a job for a ZIP drive?  When you're done with the files, just
remove the disk. Security problems solved. You may need more than one disk, but
that's better than encrypting/decrypting all the time. For fast encryption,
check out Sarah Flannerys' encryption technique. She was awarded the Irish Young
Scientists Award recently for an encryption based on 2X2 matrixes. It seem to be
as good other encryption techniques, but ten times faster. You'll have to do a
search for it, though. I do know she published her results, I'm just not sure
where. Can anyone out there help with a URL?

Cheers,

     John Gay