I pride myself on being prepared for just about anything when it comes to my laptop PC. I've successfully my data after dropping it on a concrete floor, shorting out the keyboard, and corrupting the hard drive.
But this morning, I came close to panic. OK, it was panic, although only for a moment.
Yesterday evening, I installed the newest version of PGP Desktop, the flagship personal encryption product from PGP (http://www.pgp.com). (The PGP line of encryption products originated in the work of legendary programmer Phil Zimmerman, who almost went to jail in the mid-1990s for creating an encryption product the U.S. government couldn't break.)
Everything went smoothly. After installing the program, I began what PGP calls "Whole Disk Encryption." That means that the laptop will start up only after you enter the correct PGP "passphrase" into a dialog box.
No problem there. I created a passphrase that was easy for me to remember, and hopefully, hard for anyone else to guess. Then I did something you're not supposed to do—I wrote down the passphrase on a piece of paper in case I forgot it. My intention was to shred that piece of paper this morning, after making certain that I had memorized the passphrase.
This morning, after a mug of the overly-strong coffee I'm so fond of, I sat down at the laptop and turned it on. As I expected, the PGP dialog box appeared and asked me for the passphrase. I entered it, but the program told me I had entered in an incorrect passphrase.
That's when the moment of panic set in. I typed every conceivable variation of the passphrase I could think of, at least 30 in all. None of them unlocked my laptop.
I knew from reading the PGP user guide that if I couldn’t recall the exact passphrase, the only choice I would have would be to reformat my entire hard drive. S**t!!!!
And remember that piece of paper? Apparently, the passphrase I wrote on it wasn't the one I actually used to encrypt the hard disk. Double s**t!
What to do? The only alternative was to keep trying different passphrases until one opened up the disk. Then I remembered that I had considered—and I thought rejected—a slightly shorter passphrase than the one I actually used to encrypt the hard drive. Could I have mistakenly used that one?
I entered that combination of letters, numbers, and symbols on the keyboard and briefly held my breath. The hard drive opened up normally, and I was back in business.
The moral of this story, of course, is do as I say, not as I do, to wit: DON'T FORGET YOUR PASSPHRASE!!
And of course, don't panic, unless there's a very good reason.
Copyright © by Mark Nestmann
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