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Beware of Airport Security
- Thread starter Murray M
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Same here, I fly at least ones every 12 weeks and never had any issues sleep/shutdown whatever.
Well lets thank Boeing and Airbus for pressurising the aircraft cabin so it's more like 8000ft in terms of pressure than 40000ft....
Those recommended altitude refers to the 'real' altitude NOT the altitude plane is flying..
Lots of travel here (Asia/Europe) 7-10 trips on average a year and I've never had any problem with my MBP. I do always shut them down though.
Another issue to be aware of is that if you have sensitive data on your computer, even if encrypted, just being in sleep mode is not enough to prevent someone from retrieving the encryption key from memory.
Say you are leaving a country that is known for industrial espinoge. You have all you companies 'secrets' on your MBP, with full encryption on the HD, and before leaving for the airport you just close the lid and it goes to sleep. When going through security some guard grabs you and your laptop and takes you to a separate room for a couple minutes and says they have to examine your laptop and they leave the room. You have two options at this point: 1) Sit there and comply or 2) throw a fit and end up in some third world prison. Now if your computer is in sleep mode their are ways to quickly pull the encryption key vice if it was powered off (for at least one hour before hitting security).
Sounds a bit extreme, but it can happen, and stuff like this does happen around the world.
Happy Flying!
Say you are leaving a country that is known for industrial espinoge. You have all you companies 'secrets' on your MBP, with full encryption on the HD, and before leaving for the airport you just close the lid and it goes to sleep. When going through security some guard grabs you and your laptop and takes you to a separate room for a couple minutes and says they have to examine your laptop and they leave the room. You have two options at this point: 1) Sit there and comply or 2) throw a fit and end up in some third world prison. Now if your computer is in sleep mode their are ways to quickly pull the encryption key vice if it was powered off (for at least one hour before hitting security).
Sounds a bit extreme, but it can happen, and stuff like this does happen around the world.
Happy Flying!
Considering that many aircraft operators, both civil and military, use laptops as part of their aircraft 'mission systems' and that these laptops go through airport security every day I think if we had an issue we would have stumbled onto it years ago.
Given that my particular military outfit is almost broke our laptops serve for many many years before being replaced. Most of our laptops are standard commercial units and only a fraction are ruggedised (ie those deliberately exposed to extreme environments such as extreme RF, temperature, vibration or altitude etc). Military testing has pretty much nailed down what both ruggedised and normal laptops can cope with before data loss.
Of course, given the recent incident of a certain airline crew becoming so engrossed in their personal laptops and with the ensuing heated debate to the extent that they flew past their destination, I can imagine a future where airlines would love to zap private laptops before the pilots got onboard...
Given that my particular military outfit is almost broke our laptops serve for many many years before being replaced. Most of our laptops are standard commercial units and only a fraction are ruggedised (ie those deliberately exposed to extreme environments such as extreme RF, temperature, vibration or altitude etc). Military testing has pretty much nailed down what both ruggedised and normal laptops can cope with before data loss.
Of course, given the recent incident of a certain airline crew becoming so engrossed in their personal laptops and with the ensuing heated debate to the extent that they flew past their destination, I can imagine a future where airlines would love to zap private laptops before the pilots got onboard...
Here's an interesting presentation on the weaknesses of FileValult. Despite the website name, I don't think it is actually from the NSA (which would be a .gov website). It looks like the domain name is owned by an individual.
http://crypto.nsa.org/vilefault/23C3-VileFault.pdf
Definitely not NSA.gov. It's this guy in San Francisco; interesting; wonder how many people think it's *the* NSA? There's no real website except for this paper itself....
Domain ID6025-LROR
Domain Name:NSA.ORG
Created On:06-Jan-1995 05:00:00 UTC
Last Updated On:02-Jan-2010 16:03:34 UTC
Expiration Date:05-Jan-2012 05:00:00 UTC
Sponsoring Registrarair Networks, Inc.d/b/a pairNIC (R103-LROR)
Status:OK
Registrant ID:CF377
Registrant Name:Chris Fisher
Registrant Street1:1045 Mission St
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:San Francisco
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Postal Code:94103
Registrant Country:US
There's no real website except for this paper itself....Domain ID
6025-LRORDomain Name:NSA.ORG
Created On:06-Jan-1995 05:00:00 UTC
Last Updated On:02-Jan-2010 16:03:34 UTC
Expiration Date:05-Jan-2012 05:00:00 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar
air Networks, Inc.d/b/a pairNIC (R103-LROR)Status:OK
Registrant ID:CF377
Registrant Name:Chris Fisher
Registrant Street1:1045 Mission St
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:San Francisco
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Postal Code:94103
Registrant Country:US
Looks like NSA didn't like the use of NSA in the domain name. The site no longer loads.
You can see the same PDF here. It is no longer relevant though as the techniques mentioned in the article about hacking Filevault have been patched and don't work. At this point anyway FDE using Filevault2 in Lion and Mountain Lion is perfectly secure.