Crypto n stuff

I am not a noob, nor am I experienced in these areas, modesty is a safe bet as I do not want to overstate my skillset.

I have two sources that I consider to be the people with the most experience that I know in these areas but they do not fully agree. I would like to get your opinions and whatever else you may want to share about what you do and why.

Friend 1, computer professional, runs his own business out of his house fixing peoples shit and tinkering with his own tech. Recommends LUKS for encrypting non-OS files (for speed) and temporary files and important data. Thinks truecrypt is garbage because its proprietary.

For deletion he uses dd and dev/zero. On his ext4 filesystem it takes 2 hours to dd and 2 minutes to LUKS a 300gb drive. He suspects that dev/zero over dev/urandom contributes a bit (he admitted he doesn't know how much cause he doesn't use urandom) but he thinks that the NTFS filesystem is the cause of the slow (20GB/hour) dd speed. He also said, when I brought up the idea that dev/zero with dd is less secure and determined people could see what was written on the disk before all the 0's because they're all 0's and its easy to see ( read a paranoid theory about this idea) and he said that with NTFS that'd be possible but not other filesystems.

His paranoia solution was dd, format, encrypt with random salt (I'm unsure what this is, something about password security) and then format  with a different filesystem and use that one after encrypting. He also mentioned setting up encryption to randomize keys on bootup for your temp files and pagefile where your encryption passwords are stored.

Friend 2 said that dd dev/urandom with a few passes to be safe was a good idea and that Truecrypt is trustworthy. He also recommended using a bootable USB OS over a hard drive.

Please criticize all of these assumptions as I am here to learn what is correct.

lol you're both children arguing over who's right, when all of their knowledge (note: not understanding) of the issue is based off of what their parents said. And instead of just belittling you I'm going to list each of your points and why they're basically r/atheism vs christianity bullshit dogma.


>>31 paraphrasing, "no one has beaten a pass with any write method." --- we don't know that. The doubt is reasonable when you assume the people who would be capable of these sophisticated techniques have an interest in keeping it secret.

"There was a prize of a million dollars for anyone who could" --- Doesn't mean it was a legitimate challenge.

>>8 references the wired article about manning and beating a 0 wipe and then >>47 takes it as fact and bitches at >>31 saying that the wired article is super reputable and NOT anecdotal despite it being written by a journalist who got second hand information.
The EFF verifying the wired story is no more reputable than the wired story. Unless my ignorance to the situation extends to the EFF having a reason to have reliable intelligence on this matter. Then he talks about the competition being BS and referring to the opinion of someone else... come on guys. This is so circular. It's all hearsay based off of the people who caught manning. WHO COULD HAVE LIED OR TOLD PEOPLE THE WRONG THINGS.

>>48 points out the garbage heap of circle jerk evidence and then fucks it with a retarded generalization that idiots are the only people to get caught by the authorities and the idiocy specifically extends to his capabilities of wiping his drive. lol.

>>49 you are an idiot for trusting information from a journalist who got it from people with a possible vested interest in lying about a sketchy ass situation.

tl;dr fuck you motherfuckers who pull this shit for making me take more time than I needed to in order to learn about cryptography. Instead of people stating their biases and why they have them I had to sort through a garbage heap of unsubstantiated beliefs and biases to learn about how retarded everyone is and THEN about cryptography. Thanks to everyone who helped me out and I hope this thread is not hindered by my ranting. My butt is not hurt, for I am a 4 time St.Patricks day foosball champion!