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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => General Internet News => Topic started by: SilvrDrgn on July 25, 2002, 02:56:30 AM

Title: Mutant two-headed hard drive aims for security
Post by: SilvrDrgn on July 25, 2002, 02:56:30 AM

A Japanese start-up has come up with a mutant piece of hardware that it says may deliver "perfect security" for Web servers: a two-headed hard drive.

Tokyo-based Scarabs has developed a prototype of the hard drive, which has a read-only head and a read-write head. The Web server can only read from the drive, theoretically making it impossible for attackers to deface the site or otherwise modify data.

Gee, maybe this will be M$'s saviour (not that I want them to be saved) since they can't seem to write secure software worth a crap!

Source:  CNET News.com Full Story (http://news.com.com/2100-1001-946083.html?tag=fd_top)

Title: Re: Mutant two-headed hard drive aims for security
Post by: Xand on July 25, 2002, 03:02:24 AM

Even if it doesn't stop denial of service attacks, it will keep the MPAA or the RIAA from erasing files...

Title: Re: Mutant two-headed hard drive aims for security
Post by: 23JUL on July 25, 2002, 03:21:59 AM

Stupidity rules!

1) Wheter the disk is writable or not, a DoS attack means too many connections , too less bandwidth, and/or too slow computer. Ergo: Data is saved, but it doesn't really help prevent other means of irritation.

2) I don't know how they will manage it, but you really need a writable harddisk, if you want
a) log all or some requests.
b) update database requests.
c) have a dynamic site in terms of interaction with the community/users.

So, if those things aren't possible, the site in particular is probably nice watching once, but then will only fail to interest people. Which has as consequence that, indeed, less people will try to hack such a site.  Which is in terms of marketing of this harddrive, maybe, a good point. Nobody hacks it, because why bother boring sites.

Ah, what the hell.

Title: Re: Mutant two-headed hard drive aims for security
Post by: asian1 on July 25, 2002, 08:17:12 AM

Hi
By disabling certain cable on ordinary IDE ribbon cable, it is possible to create "Read Only" hard disk drive (HD).
For Writing to HD, user replace the special IDE ribbon cable with ordinary IDE ribbon cable.
There is a product with "Read / Write lock"  mounted on an empty drive bay that control Read/Write access to HD.

Title: Re: Mutant two-headed hard drive aims for security
Post by: Nybbler on July 25, 2002, 04:17:16 PM

Well I don't see how this is so great for security.:-?

However one thing I thought was: does 2 sets of heads mean 2 times the data thoughput (when reading anyway)?

It could save a lot of hard disk thrashing when copying files between two places on the same disk! :-?

Title: Re: Mutant two-headed hard drive aims for security
Post by: System on July 25, 2002, 05:24:15 PM

Hahaha.

Who will control the write heads, then? Are you telling me that it will be impossible to remotely administrate the contents of the HD? Then you could just as well get Mac OS 9.

Besides, how much of today's web content is static? A few percent?

Title: Re: Mutant two-headed hard drive aims for security
Post by: PhatAgnus on July 25, 2002, 07:32:59 PM

Heheh! This kind of reminds me of that joke where a select nationality starts up a new space program, and boasts that their first mission is to land on the Sun. When the press asks "How are you gonna do that?", they respond: "We're gonna go at night!" Mwaahahaaa!