Saturday, October 24, 2009

My Laptop's in for repairs.

My laptop is being repaired. The mother board seems to have a problem. My laptop's hard drive has my work on it. It is encrypted. Although I made a backup of my work a day or two prior to the malfunction, I would rather resume work on the active copy on my laptop's hard drive. Hence, I want my laptop repaired promptly.

Paranoia sets in. Although I think these fears unfounded (the people who I have given my laptop to seem genuine), I still fear that the password for the encryption will be discovered. My rational mind is wrestling with the paranoia. I want my computer back so this battle can cease.

Might this posting act as inducement for the people who have my laptop to try to break my encryption? I doubt it. I have given them my laptop so that it might be fixed. They know this, and so do I. If they intended to break the encryption, they would have most probably come to this conclusion beforehand. Pointing to this posting as inducement would not stand up. They are individuals too, and as such, have a moral identity that should not be swayed by my actions here; the actions of another individual.

Now that my paranoia has been relieved somewhat, I will retire to some other activity until my laptop is fixed and returned.

1 comment:

  1. Although I know the password under which the data was encrypted, it also appears that the encryption also uses a "certificate". Nice to have known this before hand, because I have not copied the certificate.

    I may have lost about a year's work. Still, the code should not take quite long at all to rebuild as much of the thinking that went in to developing the code base has been done, and still exists in my head.

    C'est la vie. I'll know in a couple of days.

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