You Doing E-communications, Are You Safe?

In a day when it seems that the entire world has access to all of our personal information, Newsweek arrives with a blasting cover "Beating Big Brother," and as a techie-lite, I'm always interested in how big brother is peeking into my business. After reading the article, it seems there is a whole world of cyber-snoops out there, and even if it's just for kicks, these folks care about our online communications.

After some research, I find that not even faxes are secure. Many times we receive a fax that is not meant for us. A fax number can be entered incorrectly, and even if the person sending the fax types in the receiver's correct fax number, a disturbance in the telephone network can mysteriously cause a fax to go awry and deliver it to an unintended machine. In large offices confidential faxes come over the lines and lay open to whoever gets to the fax machine first. Worse that that, and something we rarely think of, is interception. Fax lines can be bugged and all incoming and outgoing faxes can be read. Intercepting a fax is a fairly simple process, it's no problem for home equipment to scan satellite traffic and pick up fax messages from around the world. There are professional grade interception units that can capture up to 150 faxes from a 6000 line satellite.

We worry about the security of our email, but sending documents by email precludes the need to retype or scan a document for additions and corrections. (This can be a rather tenuous process when faced with large documents or contracts).

So email security is a real problem. As an email wends its way over the Internet it stops at many computers designed to direct the mail to its intended address. Anyone with access to these servers can easily scan all the email that passes through their systems; they can use software that scans for keywords, credit card numbers, names or email addresses. Emails that match their search can be saved and read without the sender or receiver being aware of the breach in security.

There is a publicly available type of software, very popular with teenage hackers, nicknamed "sniffer" that will permit users to do the very same thing. A search on Yahoo for "sniffer software" yields about 24,600 web pages - you obviously don't have to be a rocket scientist to get access to this software.

What can possibly save us from all these cyber-snoops and bad deed doers? Encryption of our files and emails seems to be the only answer. The familiar 128 bit encryption versions of Internet Explorer or Netscape allow us to open certain secure websites, and this technology can also be applied to files and email.

Bit encryption is achieved with mathematical algorithms that use a "key" to encrypt and decrypt data into unreadable digital code and back again. The average key, 56 bit, is not as strong as the 128 bit - which isn't as untraceable as the 256 bit key.

To illustrate the complexity of these keys, a 56-bit key creates 72 quadrillion possible combinations. The 128 bit key would be 4.7 sextillion (4,700,000,000,000,000,000,000) times more difficult to crack than a 56-bit key. Your home computer has the power to crack a 56 bit key, but it stops at the 128 bit.

Encryption for everyone

Cryptography has traditionally been a James Bond type of thing to many of us, but as most of Bond's gadgets, encryption is available at a reasonable price. Cypherus, a new utility for encrypting documents, has a friendly changeable skin and a drag-and-drop interface. It gives everyday users the power of encryption - once reserved exclusively for governmental and military agencies - as a tool to safeguard sensitive data and communications.

The software can encrypt individual e-mail messages. Email recipients who don't have the software installed will receive the message's "key" as an executable file, and a password must be agreed upon prior to sending the email.

To prevent prying eyes from examining files on your computer, you can encrypt your files with a single mouse-click. Cypherus has the power to secure single files or groups using "Normal, High, Paranoid, and Custom" encryption levels that top out at 448-bit. Their "Shredder" permanently removes deleted files by physically overwriting file information on the hard drive. This feature can be conveniently automated to render deleted files unreadable by anyone.

Cypherus encryption is so strong that it the U. S. Government considers it munitions and they are therefore prevented from exporting their technology to "the big 7" countries: Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan.

But there are limits to the Cypherus protection. The illustrious attorney, F. Lee Bailey, spokesman for APMSafe (the developer of Cypherus, quips, "If the CIA wants to see what's on your disk, they will get in, but hopefully that won't be a problem for the people who are paying $50 for this particular program."

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