A Moment of Panic

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