Quote:
Originally Posted by cold chillin
wouldnt encrypting hard drives and operating systems stop this? do high stakes people not do this?
It would keep your data safe, as long as you knew that someone had tampered with your computer, and only once (see
Evil Maid Attack). You'd need to reinstall anyway but that's what backups are for.
The hardware could also have been tampered with (less likely, since that would be both more sophisticated and require more time), so there's that. But at least you'd be aware of your options and could make a rational decision about what to trust. If the risk was huge, you'd simply toss the computer and migrate your backup to a clean one.
It's very important to realize that when someone has had physical access to your computer, all bets are off, even with full disk encryption. But your data will still be safe as long as you move on to a clean system.