05-13-2004, 05:09 AM

My friend who has a PC has this really cool gadget where his password is his fingerprint. Now i find no real use in this feature.. yet. Probably within the next month and a half i'll be working with some pretty heavy stuff, that will require a lot of security. the company will be buying me a whole new computer for it and will keep it after the project. but wut i have to do is well "classified" haha, well not really. I just have to do some photshop and video/audio editing. but its somethings that they would rather not have out in the public yet. so they are taking all of these precautions and such. but a fingerprint thinga-ma-bob would be cool. and i'll probably be able to write it off as an expenditure.. and i'll be able to keep it. but it'll have to be some what inexpensive. say under 150? but umm.. yah anybody know if there is one that is cross platform? well TIA.

EY

05-13-2004, 05:41 AM

A "fingerprint scanner" isn't going to make your computer anymore secure, especially not a Macintosh. All OS X Macs can be easily accessed without a password, by simply holding down COMMAND-S on bootup. That's it.

If you want to secure your system, you need to:
A) Encrypt super important files with 128-bit or better encryption
and
B) Install an Open Firmware password, to disable the above mentioned hotkey

Unfortunately, encoding a video file is impractical as it would take eons to do it. Only small text files and images are easily encoded. I would however recommend that you install the Open Firmware password, if nothing else. The program to do it can be downloaded from Apple's website.

05-13-2004, 07:17 AM

my friend has one for his pc. i dont think he would have bought it if it was $150. the only os x one i see is made by sony, and does cost $150

its a pointless and silly device though :-P

but if you can write it off, and you want it...have fun :-P

05-14-2004, 06:17 PM

wait...are you saying that macs are actually less secure than windows in this situation.......

what exactly does this command + s do?...and if it actually does get u in without a password....why even bother putting passwords in?

05-14-2004, 07:45 PM

Originally Posted by ApplejustWorks

wait...are you saying that macs are actually less secure than windows in this situation.......

what exactly does this command + s do?...and if it actually does get u in without a password....why even bother putting passwords in?

Apple+S boots you into single user mode which is basically the entire screen as a terminal

a novice could do very little damage here but anybody with knowledge of unix commands could copy and delete any files you wont

05-14-2004, 08:04 PM

Originally Posted by trpnmonkey41

anybody with knowledge of unix commands could copy and delete any files you wont

wtf. why does that guy in the panther intro video say that if the computer is lost with filevault enabled, it will take "a hundred and forty nine trillion, with a t, trillion years to crack it"?????

05-14-2004, 09:03 PM

Deleting files isn't the same as accessing their content. If your files are encrypted with filevault, it probably would take trillions of years to access their contents.

05-14-2004, 10:06 PM

Yup, and having a situation in which the box itself is accessible enough that it must provide the only security isn't a good thing, as the whole box could be removed at that point along with other things there no? If it's about roomates... well...