Recommendation against Paragon backup products (when used together with TrueCrypt)

Being a longtime user of Paragon software, it’s kind of hard to do this, but anyone who thinks about getting a Paragon backup product should think twice. And here’s why. There are two main facets to data security: keeping the data backed up for the case of hardware failure or other disasters and keeping the data safe from the prying eyes of others.

Backup products, commercial or not, cater for the first. Or at least they should. For the latter there are several options, but by far the most popular is TrueCrypt. Time for a little “detour”.

TrueCrypt allows to encrypt whole partitions/disks or store files encrypted in containers which themselves take the form of files. Either way, TrueCrypt volumes are mounted transparently for the user and virtually all programs on the system. Mind you, we’re talking about a mounted volume here. There is no magic involved 1.

And that’s where Paragon Hard Disk Manager 12 (HDM12, and related backup products) fail miserably. Their marketing department claims that one can backup any files. So I tried to back up files from within my mounted volumes. Alas, HDM12 doesn’t even list the mounted volumes for backup. Having a little insight from both the kernel and user mode developer perspective, I decided to contact their support and explained the problem in great length and detail. The result was that the use case with a mounted TrueCrypt volume is a very specific case that they won’t support in the future either. Shame, I’ve been a customer for over a decade. Now I’ll think thrice before purchasing anything again from them. Moreover I’ll thoroughly test their products for similar subtle defects before I purchase or upgrade anything more from them. It’s not about the defect itself – we all create bugs, to err is human – it’s about the unwillingness to take action when confronted with a defect.

Is accessing a transparently mounted volume of any kind, be it TrueCrypt or PGP Disk or whatever, such an arcane or special use case? Being a Windows kernel and user mode developer I can tell you it’s not. And certainly there is no good technical reason to not support the use case at hand. Alas, they’re unwilling to fix an obvious defect, therefore I revoke my previous recommendations of the products (and will subsequently do so with all the people I recommended their products to by word of mouth or otherwise). Consider this an advance notice.

// Oliver

  1. unlike with many a camera, where a shell namespace extension takes care of showing the files under “My Computer” whereas they are not mounted transparently as a volume anywhere. In such case if you open the photo file in a viewer by double-clicking, what actually happens is that the shell extension will copy the file over into a temporary location and then pass that to the viewer. Of course the alternative that it doesn’t work at all also exists. Implementations vary.[]
Posted in EN, Opinion, Thoughts | 1 Comment

New rule …

… the Pope shouldn’t be allowed to use a bulletproof vehicle made of bulletproof glass. A technology that requires hard science instead of blind faith. I suggest he resort to more fitting bulletproof technologies available in medieval times, such as constructions from timber and iron 😉

// Oliver

PS: this is an allusion to Bill Maher’s “new rule” theme :mrgreen:

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“Experten”

In meiner Funktion als “Jan” treffe ich immer wieder auf Rechner die etwas mehr Liebe von ihren Besitzern und den Möchtegern-Experten, die sie betreuen, vertragen könnte.

“Experte” scheint ohnehin ein überbewerteter Begriff zu sein. Besonders hier in meiner Heimatstadt, Forst. Ohne Alternativen gibt man sich gern mit den hiesigen “Spezialisten”/”Experten” zufrieden deren abgekürzter Name an eine vermeintlich linke Partei erinnert. Schade. Vor ein paar Jahren half ich dann mal in einer Firma die vorher jene “Experten” rangelassen hatte. Die “Experten” hatten dann bereits aufgegeben, ich hatte das Problem nach einer guten halben Stunde im Griff. Als damals noch – zugegebenermaßen interessierter – “Laie”. Da rollen sich einem doch die Fußnägel auf.

Für mich scheint das grundlegende Problem ohnehin zu sein, daß sowohl die Endanwender (EA) wie auch die Dienstleister (DL) einen falschen Ansatz verfolgen. Schauen wir uns doch mal ein Szenario an. EA hat ein Problem mit dem Drucker und ruft beim DL an. DL behebt das Problem, spielt Aktualisierungen der wichtigsten und exponiertesten Programme drauf, stolpert unterwegs über Hinweise auf eine Malwareinfektion, verkauft dem EA noch als Wiederverkäufer ein Antivirenprogramm und zieht ab. Was lief hier falsch? Für mich mehrere Dinge. Erstens hätte der DL den EA auch über Risiken aufklären müssen, da der Internetführerschein leider nie eingeführt wurde. Zweitens hat der DL zwar ggf. das AV-Programm installiert, aber ob damit das Problem gelöst ist, interessiert ihn nicht mehr. Warum diese Handlungsweise? Ganz einfach: wie bei allen ökonomischen Problemen kann man hier die Anreize betrachten. Der Anreiz das System in einem problemfreien Zustand zu hinterlassen existiert nicht wirklich. Der Anreiz beschränkt sich auf die Behebung eines unmittelbaren Problems und das war’s. Warum auch nicht? Immerhin wird der Kunde ja vermutlich – gerade in einer kleinen Stadt ohne wirkliche Alternativen – wiederkommen. Bekommt der DL eben wieder Geld in die Kasse. Wie praktisch!

Was wäre nun die Alternative? Meiner Meinung nach eine ähnliche Methode wie sie bei Ärzten in China Usus ist. Der Patient (hier EA) bezahlt den Arzt (hier DL) regelmäßig um seine Gesundheit (hier ordnungsgemäßer Zustand des Computersystems) zu erhalten. Die Zahlungen hören auf wenn der Patient erkrankt. Siehe da, schon existiert seitens des DL eine Motivation wirklich die Probleme zu lösen und eben auch den Kunden über problembehaftete Verhaltensweisen aufzuklären.

Fazit: es müßte eine Art Abo geben mit dem ich als Privat- oder Geschäftskunde mein System “versichern” kann. Dabei muß die Höhe des Beitrags natürlich im Verhältnis zu den auftretenden Problemen stehen und eine eingangs – sprich vor Abschluß des Abos – durchgeführte Wartung würde auch berechnet. Ich denke als Geschäftsmodell wäre das vielversprechend, auch wenn ich es noch nirgends in Anwendung gesehen habe. Außer eben im Fall von Spezialsoftware welche man mit Wartungsvertrag “kauft” und dann eben erwartet daß der Hersteller Probleme zeitnah behebt. Die klitzekleinen Probleme damit sind allerdings die Summe welche eingangs zu berappen wäre um das System in einen ordentlichen Zustand zu bringen in dem der DL gewillt ist dem Kunden ein Abo anzubieten. Im Fall eines neu verkauften Rechners sicherlich weniger ein Problem, ansonsten aber eben schon. Ein anderes Problem wäre noch die Tatsache daß man die Geldsummen ausbalancieren müßte. Dazu bräuchte man vermutlich entweder die Sicherheit eines schönen Geldpuffers im Rücken oder eine Firma die dies als Alternativmodell anbietet und so machbare Beitragshöhen ermitteln könnte.

// Oliver

Posted in /dev/null, DE, EDV-Sicherheit, Gedanken, Meinung | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Die “neue” Religiosität

Was derzeit fehlt, ist ein Plädoyer für den Zweifler und den Suchenden. Denn er ist der sympathischste, ehrlichste und am wenigsten anmaßende Menschentypus. Nur wer meint, im Dienste des Absoluten zu stehen, ist intolerant und gefährlich.

So liest man in diesem Artikel, “Die falsche Rückkehr zur Religion”, auf ZEIT Online

Die Autorin spricht mir aus dem Herzen.

// Oliver

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Hehe … hurry down one’s chimney tonight

The Queens Christmas Message 2012

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GETTING RID OF CAPS LOCK

Through reading the great tmux book from pragprog.com I got the idea to repurpose the caps lock key as left control key. The idea seems brilliant, given how little used caps lock is. I don’t know for everyone, but most of my immediate friends and colleagues don’t use it at all – at least for the original purpose of switching to capital letters. Alas, the recipe was only given for Linux and Mac, because tmux doesn’t run on Windows directly. So I had to search and found this topic over at superuser.com which had almost what I wanted.

The solution I came up with is this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,1d,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00

It means:

00 00 00 00 | Scancode map header
00 00 00 00 | Scancode map version
02 00 00 00 | DWORDs to follow
00 1D 00 3A | 3A (caps lock) to 1D (left ctrl)
00 00 00 00 | End marker

A tool I looked at in the course of my research was KeyTweak. Seems very useful indeed and can explain existing scancode maps. But I already had what I was looking for.

// Oliver

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Heimsenda-Pizza for the doomsday :)

Very cool Icelandic pun from my boss (Friðrik), who suggested that pizza services around Iceland advertise pizzas under that name tomorrow. I mean you do know the world is going to end tomorrow, right? 21st of December 2012 … Maya calendar ends … world ends. All very very logical, of course.

The joke here: heims-enda (world’s end) vs. heim-senda (home delivery). My Icelandic isn’t too good, but I had to laugh about this one.

// Oliver

Posted in Island/Iceland/Ísland | Tagged | 2 Comments

A shout to VMware …

Since I don’t have a support contract, perhaps you would be so kind to tell your setup authoring folks to not remove the last resort for anyone who tries to install the vSphere client 5.0? Thank you in advance, very sweet of you. Because, uhm … how to put it, you removed the only “lifeline” left for anyone who has Codegear RAD Studio 2009 installed and needs both your and their product.

Or maybe … 😉

Over in this thread someone described to pass (also via /v) a different value here, instead of the property pass /qb! (complete VMware-viclient.exe /v/qb!) to the installer and it will not use the UI install sequence and therefore not force the J# stuff.

This worked for me to install vSphere client 5.0. Only, I fear that if the setup authoring folks at VMware hear about this, it may also go the way of the dodo … 🙄

// Oliver

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Da läuft der Hase also lang …

… bis vor einiger Zeit habe ich die Waffennarren in den USA immer belächelt. Aber die jetzigen Vorstöße zum Thema (abermalige) Verschärfung des Waffenrechts machen für mich deutlich, daß die Politiker Angst vor der Bevölkerung bekommen. Kein Wunder, wenn man durchgehend Politik gegen die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung macht.

Auch der Einsatz der Bundeswehr im Innern, über Jahrzehnte ein Tabu, stand ja schon zur Disposition. Ob es schon durchgedrückt wurde, habe ich entweder nicht mitbekommen, oder es ist noch nicht durch … Siehe Kommentar unten.

Bin mal gespannt wo das endet.

// Oliver

Posted in DE, Ich, der Zyniker | 2 Comments

Bitbucket not accepting StartCom CA

After contacting the Bitbucket support, I now know that they don’t support the StartCom CA. The apparent reason is that they use the stock CA certs supplied by Redhat (no version was specified in the response).

It’s a bit annoying, but the workaround is to create a repo manually, leave that empty and then push to it. This effectively is the same as importing – just from the other end.

// Oliver

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Some of my stuff now also on Bitbucket

Find it via bitbucket.org/assarbad/.

// Oliver

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First impression of Windows Server 2012

*facepalm*

// Oliver

PS: does MS think that making it look like a 2D game and forcing everyone to click tiles instead of using the keyboard to navigate the startmenu makes an admin more productive? 😕

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305

… the number of squats I did yesternight, a little over 24h ago, and that I am still feeling in my upper leg muscles.

29 29 31 31 35 35 29 29 28 29

Seventy five second breaks between each set. My heart was pumping.

Posted in EN, Fitness | 2 Comments

Da echauffiert sich die Opposition mal wieder …

… wegen Panzern für Saudi-Arabien. Daß Deutschland drittgrößter Waffenexporteur ist, scheint dagegen ansonsten nicht so schlimm. Denn die Waffen gehen logischerweise nur in Staaten welche die Menschenrechte sorgfältig achten … klar 🙄

// Oliver

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Hope I got it right …

Here’s a little command line tool to retrieve the product key from a running Windows 8. It should also work on Windows XP through 7. I am releasing the code into the public domain. I hope I got it right, but it’s possible that some edge cases aren’t covered properly. If you are a developer yourself, go and fix the issue yourself and send me a patch against the code from the Mercurial repo. Fixing other issues would require that you send me the product key and the respective registry key. I’d rather not have that …

REDISTRIBUTION TERMS: The source is of course included. The whole package is released into the PUBLIC DOMAIN.
Disclaimer: This software is provided ‘as-is’, without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the author be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software.

// Oliver

Download: winprodk.rar or winprodk.zip. The binaries are signed with my code-signing certificate.

Posted in C/C++, EN, Programming | Leave a comment

Intelevator and Fairytalevator …

Norwegian show … hilarious!

I kveld med Ylvis – The Intelevator #1
I kveld med Ylvis – The Intelevator #2
I kveld med Ylvis – The Intelevator #3
I kveld med Ylvis – The Intelevator #4

And for everyone who liked the song at the end of episode #4 as well, I extracted it for use as ringtone: hun_fastna_i_en_hiss_-_ringtone.wav. I’m not sure I got the spelling of the file name right, because I only know a little Swedish and some Icelandic, but not actually Norwegian.

// Oliver

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Annoying

… companies that tell me may passwords have to be alphanumeric or set an arbitrary upper limit to its length.

More annoying: companies that do both. 🙄

// Oliver

Posted in EN, IT Security | 1 Comment

Am I the only ignorant bastard who is skeptical about this?

Google Fiber in Kansas City. I’m torn between jealousy and skepticism concerning the many areas of our lives that Google tries to invade these days.

Don’t be evil was yesterday, … ever since Larry Page took over the position as CEO of Google in April 2011 (in my opinion). Googlers and Ex-Googlers I have talked to have voiced their skepticism about changes of internal policies and overall atmosphere within the company. Although that could be biased, which I cannot verify or falsify.

Nevertheless the many interests Google shows are actually rather scary, I think. Let’s consider for example the DNS service they offer. So I block as much of the Adsense-nonsense and tracking in place to stalk me while browsing the web, and then of course I’ll use the uncensored DNS server(s) from Google? I think not. Actually that gives them more information than they already get by my search queries even if I empty out cookies and other web storage in my browsers and use different browsers as well as VPNs and proxies. In short: it provides them with yet another puzzle piece to complete their “picture” of me … of us …

The whole philanthropist look of these “services” boils down to getting to know me, the “user” (and potential marketing victim), better.

// Oliver

Posted in EN, Thoughts | Leave a comment

The many uses of cognitive dissonance

  • Believing in a “God” and taunting science all the while using technology based on the very same science to proclaim one’s faith and many more profane tasks
  • Believing in Saddam Hussein’s involvement in 9/11 and WMD in Iraq before the invasion even after the allegations were proven wrong
  • Being for the death penalty and considering life a precious gift “from God”

Surely to be continued …

// Oliver

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Funny

The Guardian article: Texas attorney general threatens to arrest monitors observing US election

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