After being ordered to provide the decryption code for her laptop last month, a Colorado is claiming that she no-longer remembers the key. The laptop belonging to Ramona Fricosu was seized as part of a mortgage fraud case in 2010. The government has spent the last few years working to force her to decrypt the hard drive, claiming that doing so would not violate her 5th Amendment right not to incriminate herself. 
Colorado U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn has ordered a woman to decrypt her laptop so that prosecutors can pluck information from her notebook and use that information against her as part of a criminal case involving alleged bank fraud. The woman sought protection under the Fifth Amendment but was denied her request in what's shaping up to be a highly interesting case on a number of levels.
You can take off your 
Hard drive prices may be skyrocketing, but USB keys are almost a dime a dozen these days. Maybe that’s why people lose them so much; apparently, folks drop memory sticks at major rail lines by the literal bucket load. Misplacing all that data doesn’t sound smart, but security vendor Sophos recently tested an auction lot of 50 lost USBs on Sydney railways, and their findings show that losing those sticks may have been a good thing after all – since most of them were riddled with malware.
When it comes to protecting the data on your computer, you can’t do better than strong encryption. Properly encrypted, your files are safe even if a ne’er-do-well gains access to your computer, either physically or through a network. In the past, we’ve discussed how to use various encryption tools to encrypt individual files or create virtual, encrypted drives. Now, we’ll look at how to get maximum security by encrypting your boot disk using the BitLocker full-drive encryption system that’s built into Windows 7 Ultimate and Enterprise.
If the idea of sending your shady search queries into the ether makes you a little nervous, Google is coming to the rescue with a plan to encrypt searches. In the next few weeks, users that are signed into their Google account will automatically be directed to the HTTPS search page for secure searches.
If you're like most of us, it's unlikely that hackers have much interest in intercepting what you're typing. Still, with schematics and software to build keyboard sniffers readily available, it's nice to know you're protected from ne'er-do-wells, and Microsoft aims to give you that sense of security with its Wireless Desktop 2000. While it won't keep your cubicle mate from looking over your shoulder, it does use 128-bit AES encryption to keep your keystrokes a secret and your paranoia at bay.
The latest version of Micron's RealSSD C400 includes self-encrypting technology based on the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Opal specifications. Micron is pitching its C400 SED (Self-Encrypting Drive) at government systems and large corporations concerned with the rise of malicious attacks and data breaches that have taken place in the past several months.
Conventional thinking says that it would take a beast of a program to break through the encryption spit out by the SSL/TLS protocol – that’s why it’s found in so many websites and browsers these days. Unfortunately, a pair of researchers say they’ve whipped up just such a program in the form of BEAST, or “Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS,” and they plan on showing it off this Friday at the Ekoparty security conference. At least one company’s taking the threat seriously; Google plans on rolling out a Chrome update designed to confuse the BEAST and defend against its threat.Connect with MaximumPC
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