{"id":22511,"date":"2013-10-11T12:13:37","date_gmt":"2013-10-11T17:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=22511"},"modified":"2013-10-11T12:13:37","modified_gmt":"2013-10-11T17:13:37","slug":"creating-an-air-gap-for-computer-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/10\/11\/creating-an-air-gap-for-computer-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating an “air gap” for computer security"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bruce Schneier<\/a> explains why you’d want to do this … and how much of a pain it can be to set up and work with:<\/p>\n

Since I started working with Snowden’s documents, I have been using a number of tools to try to stay secure from the NSA. The advice I shared included using Tor, preferring certain cryptography over others, and using public-domain encryption wherever possible.<\/p>\n

I also recommended using an air gap, which physically isolates a computer or local network of computers from the Internet. (The name comes from the literal gap of air between the computer and the Internet; the word predates wireless networks.)<\/p>\n

But this is more complicated than it sounds, and requires explanation.<\/p>\n

Since we know that computers connected to the Internet are vulnerable to outside hacking, an air gap should protect against those attacks. There are a lot of systems that use — or should use — air gaps: classified military networks, nuclear power plant controls, medical equipment, avionics, and so on.<\/p>\n

Osama Bin Laden used one. I hope human rights organizations in repressive countries are doing the same.<\/p>\n

Air gaps might be conceptually simple, but they’re hard to maintain in practice. The truth is that nobody wants a computer that never receives files from the Internet and never sends files out into the Internet. What they want is a computer that’s not directly connected to the Internet, albeit with some secure way of moving files on and off.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He also provides a list of ten rules (or recommendations, I guess) you should follow if you want to set up an air-gapped machine of your own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bruce Schneier explains why you’d want to do this … and how much of a pain it can be to set up and work with: Since I started working with Snowden’s documents, I have been using a number of tools to try to stay secure from the NSA. The advice I shared included using Tor, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[109,58,154,388,334],"class_list":["post-22511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-technology","tag-computers","tag-internet","tag-privacy","tag-secrecy","tag-security"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5R5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22511"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22512,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22511\/revisions\/22512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}