JDPFu.com 2025

When ever a new year arrives, it is time to do some digital cleanup. Going through old files, new files, old emails, new emails, archiving important things and deleting as much as possible. Heck, if I didn’t respond to that email yet, it probably wasn’t all that important.

Anyway, here’s how I do it, and more importantly, how you can setup your systems to make it easier next year and every year after that.

I won’t pretend to know all about your digital files, so it is unlikely these techniques will work for every situation. Still, I think there is some value with just a little organization.

By now most people that I know are using Anki techniques to learn things with memorization. Anki quizzes on facts and tracks whether we get them correct or not.

Anki learning gets a little tedious to me. Boring. There is at least one less boring option.

This week we’ve all read how General Petraeus was forced out of his position because the FBI was able to read his emails. I’ll leave the moral question about affairs for you to determine on your own, however, from a technology perspective, he did many things wrong.

I’ve added an update below, since new technical information has become known.

I started something new this week and must say that
My Corpse Pose Rocks!

I thought that was funny before, but now it is hilarious!

I just need to improve on the other 25+ poses covered. ;) I can see that taking a lifetime. Something that looks so simple can be extremely hard.

BTW, my ooooms are good, but have some room for improvement too. It is unexpected that I do feel something internally when making that sound.

Watching Olympics on NBC

I’m addicted to Olympics. I admit it. As I watch them on my OTA setup, the fluffers, you know, the announcers between sports, are constantly saying to watch all the events Live by visiting nbcolympics.com. I’ve been there a few times and been disappointed.

Sorry, this becomes a rant.

Where is Curiosity?

There are many different types of passwords. Some are for a financial institution and others are for blog comment websites and others are for your email accounts. Not all of these need to be 100% secure, but it would be easier if they were. If someone gets into a blog or forum account, so what, provided you have different passwords for each login. Good password management works. OTOH, if they get into your primary email account, that will provide access to almost every other account, including financial ones, with just a little effort. It would be best if there aren’t any breaches for these sensitive accounts – either through password cracking or other back-end cracks that we hear about weekly. That’s the ideal world. Reality is a little different.

The problem isn’t just about cracking your passwords today. The smarter cracker will retain your encrypted data/packets so they might be decrypted/cracked in the future. Yes, we need to protect our sensitive data not just for today, but for the next 20-40 years when 256-bit encryption will be trivial to crack. Perhaps protecting it for our lifetime is the best practice?

So, what can we do to minimize the future risks?

Password Managers

I love KeePassX and the cross-platform versions of this password manager, so I try to always use a long, complex, random, generated password for most of my needs. Sometimes a website limits the complexity to only 20 characters or just letters and numbers, significantly reducing the strength of the crypto alphabet. To counter act those limitations, I’ll try to use a nonsensical userid too. There are lots of other uses for a password manager that might be useful.

All this is stored inside a KeePassX database and automatically replicated to 4-10 different systems daily. The actual number changes since not all of them are always available. It is also backed up on many of these systems daily with 30 or 90 or 365 day versions available. The DB will not be lost. I would be sad if it became corrupted on my main system that I consider read-write, but any of the read-only versions are good enough too, if something bad happens.

High Value Targets

With all this data stored inside a file, that means my cracking just that 1 file, everything important to me can be known. It is a very high-value target. Lots of people do this with their password databases too. They trust the strength of the encryption as the only protection.

Future Cracking

That is a false sense of security. Here’s why. Just because some encryption cannot be cracked today, that doesn’t mean it can’t be cracked in 5 or 10 or 15 or 30 years. Anyone with a copy of the old file can crack it years later and gain access to sensitive data or passwords. It has been reported that the NSA has been recording SSL data packets on the internet for years – not because they can crack the crypto today, but for when they can crack it, then all that traffic will become available.

Keeping It Safe

There is no way to keep the data safe once it gets out, even if encrypted. At some point in the future, our 4096 AES encrypted data will be as easy to crack as anything encrypted with ROT13 is today. The point is that any current encryption will be trivial to crack in the future. Count on that. Here are a few steps to limit your exposure. You’ve probably heard most of them before:

• Use the strongest encryption possible.
• Use the longest keys/passwords possible, everywhere, not just for important data.
• Change your high-value passwords periodically, annually is probably often enough, unless there is a breach.
• Follow good password creation practices – which has been written about everywhere recently. There is no substitute for length.
• Try to prevent leaks of your passwords and password manager DB – don’t tempt fate.
• Other Techniques for Secure Passwords

About Future Cracking

Any encrypted packet, file, whatever-data, is only as secure as the crypto, passphrase, AND lack of access to the raw data can make it for your lifetime. In the future, we must assume that all our current state-of-the-art encryption will be cracked and the currently protected content will be available.

I use to offer my KeePass-database to anyone to show how confident I was in the crypto. That was stupid. Fortunately, nobody ever took a copy … unless it was on a USB flash drive I was sharing and they grabbed it without my knowledge. I can’t think of any of those people who are likely to spend more than a few hours on the file before deleting it. I could be wrong.

The file was also stored on a smart phone that was brazenly stolen during a recent trip overseas. It is out there now and forever. The smart phone had been reset to factory settings the day before the theft, SIM removed and the external SDHC memory was removed, my google account was not connected to the phone, but doing all that doesn’t remove all the data stored on the internal SDHC media. Some data is left behind, including my KeePassX database and a few photos. Of course, I had a strong passphrase on the DB, the phone was locked, but still, the general data on the device, not encrypted, could be recovered. I am not panicked about this, but I will be changing all the passwords over the next few months just to be certain. Obviously, the passphrase for KeePass has been changed too.

Sorry for the non-tech diversion today, but my local area has set a new pollen count record of 9,369 particles/m². This is more than 1/3rd higher than the prior record. Read more here.

Antihistamines are flying off the store shelves.

Before I moved here, I thought pollen counts of 200-400 were high, though I never followed the data much.

I’m pretty lucky, no respiratory issues, but with pollen counts this high, I think everyone is impacted. So if you find yourself working with someone miserable in the Southeastern USA, please understand they probably have trouble breathing due to the pollen. It will get worse before it gets better, since this is just the first wave of fairly large pollen. When the smaller pollens get release, then people with allergies will really be impacted.

There is good news. Rain is forecast for the next few days which should help wash it all away. The streets will be running with lime-green fluid.

Unfortunately, I have to do a little yard work today.

Don’t you just love reading about governments making stupid assumptions about people? No? Me neither.

It seems many people may be terrorists by doing things that are

• perfectly legal
• required due to other stupid government laws
• necessary to ensure privacy

Here’s the news article to provide some background on the FBI and DoJ thoughts.

Shmoocon is a security/hacker conference where security people show how to hack and how to protect against hacks for personal and corporate needs. If you know how to hack someone else, then you are better equipped to prevent those same attacks against yourself, your clients, and your company.

At Shmoocon, a presenter showed how to use those convenient RFID payment chips inside Debit and credit cards for fraud

Just because something is easy, doesn’t make it a good idea. Look for the full video link later in the comments.