How SAFE is it to store SENSITIVE INFORMATION in a .txt file

>>58774497
Encrypt it when not in use.

If it could ruin your life, why right it down though?

>>58774508
Because it's important stuff to me.

>>58774508
What should I use? GNU? So if my computer gets hacked through the internet or some shit, then the encryption will protect the file?

>>58774546
Are you talking jail time? If so, you're just asking for trouble writing it down.

Lookup sha-256 (or 512). Maybe truecrypt

>>58774665
Not jail time, but definitely divorce and my kids hating me, which I would probably find more unbearable than jailtime.

>>58774546
Technically it protects you if you use a secure tool like gnupg.
But the bad guys might as well keylog your password and still get the contents so you must use and airgapped pc or Ubuntu with a VM inside it so you can monitor any outgoing traffic using wireshark.

also, NEVER EVER trust non open source encryption software

>>58774726
maybe learn another language (that your family doesn't speak) and write down your gay erotica that language?

>>58774497
use some form of pig latin translator/come up with a variant that you understand then use stenography to hide

probably a fun project desu

>>58774738
What if I partitioned and installed a fresh ubuntu distro?

Get a retina scanner

>>58774779
Definetly better than anything microsoft but if your life depends on it dont connect it to the internet.
Enable disk encryption and if you have an ssd get a small hdd for this purpose because ssd's are hard to securely erease. Use the onscreen keyboard when typing in passwords to avoid hardware keylogging.

I dont know what are your conditions but always be extra careful when handling sensitive data.

>>58774665
>Lookup sha-256 (or 512)
SHA is a hash algo and you cannot encrypt files with it retard.

>>58774508

>when not in use
>neo /g/

Jesus Christ you're supposed to have it encrypted even when using it retard. Otherwise you're gonna have to shred it every time and for that you need to make sure of lots of other stuff.

>>58774497
put it on the apple cloud

>>58774497
do you live with niggers snoopin around?

>>58774497
no one will care you suck dicks last night.
they already know.

>>58774882
>when not in use
>gonna have to shred it

uhn, not really, if its a txt and decrypt the whole thing in memory, as in, the scrambled text open in notepad

it just gotta be a crypt scheme that saves the binary encrypted data as base85 or base64

>>58774497
if youre just worried about friends, relatives and wife, sifting thru your files and accidentally finding it, running truecrypt or veracrypt under winblows if thats what you use should suffice.

the thing with the air gapped linux is just so you dont get attacked remotely, but your wife or brother could just as well install something in your linux to record the password.

so just make a small 1GB truecrypt volume... after all, even you run a live linux instead, like Tails, your wife can still install a hardware keylogger via ps2/usb, or even switch your keyboard for a copy with logging hardware inside prepared by someone she paid.


the real solution would be a smartphone with some custom OS running from the sdcard, wired external keyboard,

What you need for complete security in this case is a system that not only has never but can never touch the internet, and has no external outputs or inputs. Buy an RPI, install a distro on it from a known trusted source, hardwire your monitor and keyboard to it. Remove all extra ports, get one without onboard wifi or blutooth.

But if it's just your wife and kids just run veracrypt bruh. NSA ain't gettin' you.

>>58775278

>decrypt the whole thing in memory

That's transparent decryption, not decryption.

about as safe as leaving a paper copy on your table

Use a dedicated device just to write the file and never connect it to any network.
Encrypt the file just in case someone finds said device and tries to open the file. If possible encrypt the whole device and then encrypt the single file with a different password.

>>58774497
Google Veracrypt and find some guide on how to use it. It lets you create and mount an encrypted file on your desktop that will look like a thumbdrive to your OS. You'll be able to just move your textfiles in there and work on them as if they were on a thumb drive.

Every time you want to "connect" the thumbdrive you just start veracrypt, find the encrypted file and enter your password. When you're done you just unmount this encrypted file.

>>58774497
low-tech, low-effort method would be winrar that shit and use a 10+ digit password with *&^% characters

unless you got the NSA trying to access that shit you should be good

>>58776075
In regards to passwords how much worse is doing something like

Raven1King3Bear5Adder7Hawk9!

compared to

Arssgi1Jrkh3Bhsh5Radfgf7Mglg9!

>>58776161
1st pass will be cracked faster with a customized brute force attack using dictionaries instead letters but the person attempting to crack would have to be aware that there's more words after the end of the first string of numbers

>>58776262
For normal purposes, email, vidya, etc is the top method fine? I use authenticators whenever possible and admittedly I've never seen signs of hacking, never lost an account or anything, but I'm paranoid.

I also have been using a program called keypassx to generate 36 character passwords and store them in a database that requires a password and a keyfile to be selected from the harddrive.

>>58774497
Aside from what's been said, also place the text file in a non-obvious directory. Like creating an unconspicuous subfolder in some program file tree subfolder.

Handwritten journals seem like a far bigger risk in your situation than something digitized. It's so easy to hide a txt file from your wife and kids. Encrypt by all means if you want, but let's face it, if you wrote it into a txt file and zipped it into some innocuous file in a folder no one's going to look in it's extremely unlikely to ever be found provided the file itself and the file directory stay out of recently opened files and locations. Also make the file hidden.

You don't want to have the contents of your txt file indexed, by the way, because then it could be accidentally found. This is kind of obvious, but people make mistakes with the obvious stuff all the time.

In my opinion, if you use basic common sense like above, your biggest risk of getting caught is making your wife and/or kids suspicious about your computer activity. I mean, if you have a computer behind lock and key running 1337 distro with encryption etc. and whenever your wife sees you at the computer you're twitching and sweating, then your wife will know you're hiding something in that computer. Even if she doesn't know what it is, it will fuck your shit up. That's why the best cons are people who stay calm and ordinary and don't raise suspicions by behaving in strange ways.

I'd bury the file deep in a normie system.

Alexander was Macedonian.

make a text file .txt, when not in use writing, rename to .sys and store in win32 folder

>>58774497
if you tell me whats in the journals I'll give you a good way to hides files

the more specific you are
the more specific I'll be

i used to work with people who kept sensitive documents on unpatched windows xp machines that if released could cost the organization a loss of literally 100 million dollars a year

literally no one cared, even after most of our staff had their emails hacked by hostiles

>>58777257
you could have just said you worked for the US government, geez...

>>58776587
Why do you think he was american?

>>58777504
it's probably because the quote is in english, and not whatever language Alexander spoke that I'm too lazy to google

>>58777554
Well its obviously some ancient greek

>>58774726
just tell them and speak it up

>>58777257
This is why the IT dept need to be on their game and lock down the network and permissions on computers in a large organisation. It sucks for "power users" but is the lesser of two evils.

>>58774497
>He doesn't know what encryption is
The technical knowledge on this board is going down the shitter

>>58774497
Layers. So, many people have suggested encrypting the files, which you should do, but defense is depth.

Full disk encryption, with a secure password. Don't reuse the password anywhere.

Require a login on your system, don't auto login.

Lock the screen when you walk away from the system.

Use a secure password for your account. Don't reuse that password anywhere.

Stay up to date with patches.

Uninstall flash.

Use a good password manager for online accounts.

Use separate browsers, with throw away sessions, for browsing unknown, or known but sketchy, sites.

Finally, encrypt your sensitive files.

>>58774726
Just use PGP for that.

If we're not talking about law enforcement it will be more than enough.

Why not just get a USB drive?

I use randomized passwords for everything and don't even remember them myself. I just keep them all in a .txt file on an encrypted USB drive.

>>58776161
It's shit. Use dice ware (look it up). Use 15+ words if you're ultra paranoid.

>>58778292
Because none of that is going to be suspicious to his wife and kids, right? This whole idea that the primary threat is some 1337 cracker lurking on the interwebs ready to break into his computer via the interwebs to take away his topsecret.txt is silly.

A good solution needs to be compatible with a non-schizo reality. It is easy to hide a txt file without turning the hiding game into a circus that in itself tells the people he's trying to hide it from that he's hiding something so terrible he has to go to extreme lenghts to prevent them from seeing it. You can hide a txt by normal means in a way that they don't have a clue there is anything even hidden anywhere.

Put it in some program file type folder. RAR it with a password. Change the file extension to something else. Alter the date of the file so it blends in with the other files in the folder.

>>58778345
Then he needs to hide the USB drive, and if his wife and/or kids find it and stick it in, they'll be really puzzled about what's on it and why it's top secret.

When it comes to hiding something from real live persons, there is a point where your precautions become a clear signal you're hiding something.

>>58774497
>A good solution needs to be compatible with a non-schizo reality. It is easy to hide a txt file without turning the hiding game into a circus that in itself tells the people he's trying to hide it from that he's hiding something so terrible he has to go to extreme lenghts to prevent them from seeing it. You can hide a txt by normal means in a way that they don't have a clue there is anything even hidden anywhere.
But I encrypt all my stuff anyway. Years of habit from work. It's just second nature to me now, and is for my wife as well.

I know we're not normal in most senses.

>>58774665
The fuck? You realize sha is used for verifying the hash of a file, correct?

>>58776161
random words would be better just put many of them like 7-8

>>58774497
>How SAFE is it to store SENSITIVE INFORMATION in a .txt file on my desktop?
Not safe at all, holy shit.

Buy a thinkpad, physically disable the wifi, and encrypt the files, and make sure you keep it in a completely powered down state while not using (no suspend or hibernate).
Congrats you're now safe unless a swat team breaks down your door while you're writing.

>>58779250
>no faraday cage

kek, you do realise that the wifi isn't the only part of a modern computer that can do wireless I/O, right?
Intel processors especially have wireless receivers in them that work at the hardware level

>>58779317
>Intel processors especially have wireless receivers in them that work at the hardware level
No they don't, you moron.
Also ironically their ME has to access wifi through the OS, it's only the ethernet connection it can tap unrestricted.

>>58774665
>truecrypt
>not veracrypt
>not dmcrypt + LUKS

OP if this shit it THAT important to you, there's no way you'll forget it, and therefor no reason to write it down.
It's nothing illegal, so who fucking cares?
If it's only a secret from your wife and kids, you could probably get away with just throwing it all onto an encrypted USB. Nothing fancy, I seriously your wife/kids even know this information exists, and have no reason to be after it.
You're either some paranoid faggot getting kicks out of tantalizing /g/ with muh secrets, or you actually want to get caught.
kys

But it in a zip file with a password (a good pw)

Encrypt it and then create a cipher for the actual text you have written down in the file that gets decoded by following certain steps depending on the time of month the message was written at.

Do not sign off on any of the messages, even in your cipher language, or make heavy repeated use of any particular phrase unless you want to get Turing'd.

>>58774497
Use linux (at best something completly open source), encrypt your hard drive with a good key.
Strong login password different from your encryption password.
Encrypt files when not in use, dont use the internet.
Keep Pc on only when needed, auto lock set on 1 min.
If you are using a laptop in public buy a lock for it.
And if you really want to make sure you can program some autodestruct, eg. when there wasnt a specific action made since X days destroy everything.