Lazybit

Password Carrier is an advanced form filling application, which has many tricks up its sleeve. It uses the most reliable encryption algorithm to keep your passwords secure, it works with biometric devices, it can be used directly from a removable drive, it is small and it doesn't get in your way. However, there is another important detail which is hidden beneath everything else - Password Carrier's intelligent approach to form-filling.

Our approach is that of understanding the meaning of each field in a form, and using that knowledge when you browse a site not visited previously. This offers a great advantage - if you purchase something in a web-store, your User Profile details will be used to fill in the forms. If you go to another site - you won't have to fill the forms in again, because your User Profile is the same. On the other hand, if Password Carrier 'blindly' filled in the forms with data you used previously, it would mean that when you visit a new site, you will have to manually fill in the fields once, and only after that the program will be able to take over and automate your actions.

The role of the User Profile is that of a business card - it contains your general details, which are 'plugged' into a form whenever they are requested. The user profile is an independent entity, and it is universal. In contrast, your other credentials such as username/password are not universal, instead you have a different set of credentials for each site you visit.

For instance, on www.siteA.com you are asked to enter a username and a password - Password Carrier will remember those and use the data in the future.

If www.siteB.com asks for your email and password - Password Carrier will use the email address specified in your profile, and it will only memorize the password (because your email address is globally unique, while the password for www.siteB.com is different from your other passwords).

However, some sites are not following the same logic. A typical example is Gmail, it uses your email address as a user ID, in this case Password Carrier provides the email address from your User Profile. If you enter another address in the field, it will be overridden by the email address from the User Profile (since it has the top priority) when the page is open again.

A workaround is to use your @gmail.com address as the email address of the User Profile. However, a problem may occur if you use multiple email addresses, and in some cases you have multiple accounts on the same site. You can deal with this by using multiple flash disks, each of them will represent one of your multiple identities on the web. The licensing policy allows you to use the same license for multiple instances of Password Carrier (on other USB drives that belong to you), as long as you are the only person who uses the drives.

Introducing identities

The future releases of Password Carrier will come with a new feature, which deals with the aforementioned problem. Identities will allow you to create multiple user profiles, as well as keep different sets of credentials for each profile.

Your work colleagues call you "Thomas Anderson", but when your shift is over, you go back home and post messages in newsgroups as "Neo"? No problem, Password Carrier's identity manager will handle that. You'll be able to switch from one identity to another with a few mouse-clicks, without having to restart the program. Each identity has its own user profile, and a separate storage for credentials entered on web-pages.

We have recently released Private Disk Multifactor 2.0, a huge step forward in 'multifactorian history'. I will explain how one can migrate a Private Disk encrypted image to a Private Disk Multifactor encrypted image; in other words - how to use smart-card or token authentication for an image which used to be mounted by typing a simple password.

1. Make a backup copy of the encryption key (by pressing Copy in the Recovery tab);
2. Connect the smart card or token to the system, then press Restore on the same tab;
3. You will be asked to locate the backup copy you made at step#1, then enter the PIN of the token or card. If you don't have a PIN yet, it is strongly advised to set one.

That's all. It should also be mentioned that the image can still be mounted with a password, and with a smart card or token, thus different people can access the data without having to know each other's password or PIN.

Private Disk 2.09 was released a couple of days ago, these release notes will give you more details about the new version and walk you through the new features.

The final build of the EXE is 2.08.41, if you managed to get hold of the beta, make sure that you are using the latest version by checking the program's About window.

You may have noticed that the transition was from 2.07 to 2.09, so naturally a question will arise - "What about 2.08?". The truth is that 2.08 was released earlier, but it was only available on the Japanese market, as a retail product. Here is a picture of Private Disk 2.08 JP

Since we're into boxes right now, here is a picture of an older retail version of Private Disk Multifactor.

Private Disk 2.08 could also be downloaded from our public ftp server (ftp.dekart.com/pub/), so some of you may have copied it.

2.09 is a huge step forward in stability, and besides tweaking some of the previous featues, it provides a couple of new things that were not available earlier. It is almost certain that 2.09 is the last, or the last but one release of the 2.x branch; afterwards Private Disk will enter the 3.x era. You can post your feature wishlist in this forum thread What I'd like to see in Private Disk 3.0.

Here is a commented changelog:

• 64-bit platform support: Private Disk is now compatible with 64-bit releases of Windows, it runs on AMD64 and IA-64, so AMD fans and Intel fans are happy. Today Private Disk is able to work on literally any version of Windows, the old Windows 95 or 98, and the new XP x64, or the 64-bit version of Windows 2003.
• Autofinish is a new feature that works like Autorun, but is invoked when the disk is dismounted. You can use it for things like clearing temporary files, sending commands to a remote machine, writing some data to a log, and so on. The program will wait until the programs that were started are done with their activities; if one of them crashes - Private Disk will kill the process.
  
  
• Install to removable disk: once upon a time, there used to be a tutorial which explained how to copy the program to a removable disk and use it directly from there, but now this can be done with a single click (see the next screenshot).

• Safe hardware removal: when the program is launched from a removable disk, a new entry will show in the program's tray-icon menu: "exit and safely remove hardware". This will display the safe hardware removal dialog when the program quits, so that you don't forget about safe hardware removal. This change moves you one step away from accidental data loss. Just in case, here is some additional reading material about data corruption and backups.

  
• Hibernate control allows you to choose whether the virtual disks will remain connected when the system goes to hibernate. Some like to leave them mounted, even though this is a bit less secure (imagine that the laptop is stolen when it is hibernating; when it is started next time - the virtual disk is mounted, so there is no need to know what the password is in order to access the files).
• Disk Firewall is now improved; the changes relate to its stability and flexibility. Disk Firewall became more reliable (this only relates to the small number of systems on which it behaved incorrectly in certain circumstances). As for flexibility - the feature can be disabled without 'sacrificing' the list. The older releases worked in a slightly different way: Disk Firewall is enabled as soon as you add an entry to the white-list, and the only way to disable it was to remove all the white-list entries, which can be painful if the list is long and it took you a while to build it. If Disk Firewall is enabled, while the white-list is empty, it means that only the programs that reside within the virtual disk are allowed to access it. Now Disk Firewall can be turned off, without letting the list go. The same logic applies to the other list-based features - Autorun and Autofinish.
  
  

  
  Those who are still not familiar with Disk Firewall should take a look at this page (facts about Disk Firewall), there is also this flash clip which illustrates Disk Firewall in action.
  

• There were changes in the API on which Private Disk relies, they will soon become available in the Private Disk SDK. Many other changes were applied at the program's low-level architecture, the effects cannot be seen today, but these changes will establish a smooth transition to 3.x.

Here is the changelog:

Version 2.09:

+ the program can install itself to a removable disk
+ allows to have access to the encrypted disk for programs that are run from the encrypted disk only
+ improved disk backing up mechanism
+ allows to disable/enable Autorun feature
+ allows to disable/enable Disk Firewall feature
+ allows to define programs to be automatically run on disk dismounting
+ allows the user to exit Private Disk software and safely remove the USB drive if it has been run from the USB drive
+ allows the user to choose whether the disk will be dismounted or mounted if the PC goes to hibernate
+ allows the user to choose whether chkdsk will be called before the backing up the encrypted disk
- fixed bug with impossibility to run automatically LNK/PIF-files with long paths

Version 2.08:

+ compatibility with Windows XP/2003 x64
- fixed bug with false warning "files are open on the disk" if Disk Firewall is enabled
- fixed bug with the impossibility to automatically mount disks that are located on a network share
- fixed bug with starting Private Disk software when it is already running