Latest Essays
Page 75
Protect Your E-Mail
Safeguard your messages today, and prepare for electronic commerce tomorrow
You may have just started using the Internet for your business, but scientists, academics, and computer programmers have been using it for years. It was designed specifically as a public network for sharing information. Because the availability of information was the priority, provisions for data security were not considered essential. But now that you’re sending proprietary business information over the Internet that openness can become a drawback. You need to take steps to protect your communications…
Electronic Speech – For Domestic Use Only
The U.S. State Department recently ruled that some forms of electronic speech are not protected by the First Amendment and can be prohibited from export. This decision raises questions about freedom of speech on the information superhighway. As business communications continue to migrate from paper mail to electronic mail, these questions will become more important. It is vital that laws address this new form of speech.
Last year, I wrote a book called Applied Cryptography> (John Wiley & Sons, 1994), which explains cryptography in nonmathematical language. It describes how to build cryptography into products, illustrates cryptographic techniques, and evaluates algorithms and makes recommendations on their quality. It even includes source-code listings that enable readers to implement many of the algorithms and techniques described…
High-Tech Government Snooping: Anti-Crime or Orwell Revisited?
Good news! The federal government respects and is working to protect your privacy… just as long as you don’t want privacy from the government itself.
In April 1994, the Clinton administration, cleaning up old business from the Bush administration, introduced a new cryptography initiative that ensures the government’s ability to conduct electronic surveillance. The first fruit of this initiative is CLIPPER, designed to secure telephone communications.
CLIPPER is a tamper-resistant chip designed by the National Security Agency, a super-secret branch of the Department of Defense…
Virus Killers: Macworld Lab Tests Virus Software and Survives
Macintosh users ignore computer viruses at their peril. Viruses can cause irreparable damage to the system or destroy megabytes of data. Fortunately, unlike their biological namesakes, computer viruses are relatively easy and painless to control. With a leading virus-protection software program, it takes only a few minutes a day to remain virus-free.
Macworld Lab tested four antiviral products—the freeware application Disinfectant, Central Point Software’s MacTools ($149.95), Symantec’s Symantec AntiVirus for Macintosh (SAM, $99), and Virex ($99.95) from Datawatch—against every Macintosh virus known at the time of testing, 52 in all. We also looked at each product’s features and measured how fast the programs detected viruses…
Virus Protection on the Mac is Simple But Necessary
“Protecting yourself from Mac virus infection is easy; it’s a wonder there are people who don’t do it,” said Ben Liberman, independent Macintosh consultant in Chicago. There are several good anti-viral software packages, both commercial and free, designed to protect your Mac from attack.
There are two types of anti-viral software: protective and detective. The commercial virus-prevention software packages -Central Point Software Inc.’s Central Point Anti-Virus for Macintosh 2.0, Symantec Corp.’s Symantec Anti-Virus for Macintosh 3.5 and Datawatch Corp.’s Virex 4.1 – support both protective and detective protection. There are two freeware virus-protection programs: Disinfectant, which takes a detective approach, and GateKeeper, which takes a protective approach. Both programs are available on most bulletin board systems and on-line services…
Macs Prove Their Worth as High-End Lab Assistants
Abundance of software, ease of use make Macs the tool of choice for researchers
Macs are used extensively in the sciences. Not just for writing research papers and creating presentation graphics but also for instrument control, data acquisition and analysis, and scientific simulation. There are many scientific applications available on the Macintosh – commercial, free and custom-built – and scientists all over the world are taking advantage of them.
The Mac is also commonly used in the sciences as a front end to high-end workstations. Data collected and numbers crunched on workstations are often brought over to the Mac for final manipulation and presentation…
Mac Development Tools Get With the Program
A computer platform is only as good as the software developed to run on it. To create good software, programmers need flexible development tools that take advantage of evolving hardware and operating systems.
Apple’s interests lie in keeping development tools current so programmers will continue to develop for its Mac, Newton and PowerPC platforms. It has often received criticism from developers for delays and outdated tools.
Mac tools are keeping pace with those on other platforms with help from companies, such as Symantec Corp., that are releasing new languages, environments and class libraries for in-house developers…
Automatic Disk Compression Stirring Debate Among Users
Automatic disk compression programs promise to effectively transparently double the storage space on your hard drive. Although most can live up to this claim, several factors, including performance and reliability problems, have sullied the images of these products.
Given the prevalence of cheap disk drives, some doubt the wisdom of using these products at all. Many users report no problems, however, and have come to rely on automatic disk compression to squeeze every last byte out of their storage devices.
There are two types of background compression products: file-level and driver-level. File-level compression programs compress files during idle periods and uncompress previously compressed files as they are read from disk. Driver-level compression programs replace or supplement a drive’s SCSI controller and automatically compress all files as they are written and uncompress them as they are read…
Emergency Recovery Tools: Raising Data from the Dead
Any user who has suffered a disk failure can attest to the importance of regular backups. No matter how vigilant a backup program you implement, however, a disk crash between backups can still destroy valuable data.
“You stress backups, but in most cases people don’t do them,” said Mark Goldenberg, senior development engineer at Hughes Aircraft Co. of Fullerton, Calif. “Or the file they destroyed or deleted is one they created that day.” In situations such as this, emergency disk recovery tools can prove invaluable.
Several Macintosh utility bundles include tools that can resurrect lost data and take measures to keep catastrophic crashes at bay. Symantec Corp.’s Norton Utilities for Macintosh, Central Point Software Inc.’s MacTools Deluxe, Fifth Generation Systems Inc.’s Public Utilities and Datawatch Corp.’s 911 Utilities (sold in a package called SuperSet Utilities) all include tools to diagnose and repair crashed hard drives, recover deleted files, and optimize drive performance. The differences among the optimization and recovery tools in these packages are subtle, and each contains other utilities, so choosing among them can often be a matter of personal taste…
Clipper Gives Big Brother Far Too Much Power
In April, the Clinton administration, cleaning up business left over from the Bush administration, introduced a cryptography initiative that gives government the ability to conduct electronic surveillance. The first fruit of this initiative is Clipper, a National Security Agency (NSA)-designed, tamper-resistant VLSI chip. The stated purpose of this chip is to secure telecommunications.
Clipper uses a classified encryption algorithm. Each Clipper chip has a special key, not needed for messages, that is used only to encrypt a copy of each user’s message key. Anyone who knows the key can decrypt wiretapped communications protected with this chip. The claim is that only the government will know this key and will use it only when authorized to do so by a court…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.