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Digital Security Tactics – Computers

Posted on by Elias Kifle
  1. Use passphrases for all your sensitive data.
  2. Keep your most sensitive files on flash disks and find safe places to hide them.
  3. Have a contingency plan to physically destroy or get rid of your computer at short notice.

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6 thoughts on “Digital Security Tactics – Computers”

  1. Here is also my advice:

    All digital information is at the basic level a collection of numbers. Even pictures are numbers.

    These numbers have meanings as long as they are organized in a certain manner.

    For example, a picture of cat can be 09 44 87 in .jpeg format.

    If I add 3 to the first, 4 to the second and 1 to the 87, I have 11 48 88, this is no longer a picture of cat. Then I can send this garbage over the internet and even if the Chinese software intercepts it, it wouldn’t know what it is. Somebody at the receiving end can then subtract appropriate numbers and find the picture of a cat.

    Basically this is called encryption and decryption. All email now a days does this but the email encryption method is usually hacked and that is how the chinese spies can find out what is going on.

    The idea is to use individualized, user specific encryption methods. This can be done by any sophisticated programmer without a lot of difficulty. Could give the Chinese a real headache, real fast.

  2. Ethiopian Review should recognize D. Taye, the person who wrote Ethiopica Calendrica. The perpetual calendar came out about twelve years ago right after the book by Professor Getachew Haile, Bahere Hasab, was released. The program, coded in Java, is a solid, multi-faceted and versatile calendar that will never expire, giving us a calendar for ever.

  3. “This can be done by any sophisticated programmer without a lot of difficulty. Could give the Chinese a real headache, real fast.” hmm…

    What a simple way of giving simple and practical advice within everbody’s reach? Uh..!

  5. Well, I threw in the “sophisticated programmer” part for 2 reasons:-

    – to emphasize the need for caution.
    Ethiopia is, by all accounts, a totalitarian police state. Everyone is spied upon and even if not, it should be assumed so. Hence the need for extra caution.

    For example, it is possible anybody with a software such as Matlab or Netbeans can do the above encryption. But if they are so careless as simply to add say 3 to all data.. the picture will still be visible, but only a lot more brighter. You need to know what you are doing.

    – to utilize the know how available in the USA
    Any above-average programmer here in the usa can create an encoder-decoder program of say 50kbytes. You can hide this in, say for example, in a movie data. There is no way in hell TPLF could find this. Then if somebody flies with that to Ethiopia, pull out the file, synchronize it with home..and distribute it to cells in Ethiopia, there is no hope for TPLF to intercept any data.

    So it is still possible for an ordinary joe to use this method, safely and without any detection. But the origin of the process need to be of necessity from the more sophisticated programmers here in the USA.

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