Well, this is Frikken depressing...

[Tenacious]

Heh, I just had to chime in. I did some volunteer work with the Amish and Mennonites recently up in Detroit and ugh... ya, those old assumptions about the Amish are a little out dated. Some of them use electronics, mind you they generate their own power, but they use electronics. Some Amish like groups even have Facebook. And as a matter of fact, they are not all Communal, and some don't farm but work at the local factories instead.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to stereotype anyone.  In truth, I have respect for their convictions and society.  I enjoy visiting their communities (trying not to be a tourist) when I pass through.

[danbeaver]

Matt,

This is a big point about troubleshooting an Amiga, its frequent crashes could be a weak PSU, failing capacitor, eroded track, or one of the multitude of patches made to the flippin' OS!  Or a tampered with HDD.

As far as the infected HDD firmware goes, this was another (NSA/TSA/Homeland/Fatherland Security Act) large scale effort that now uncovered, will lead to the Snowden Effect of people finding way to make sure they are not having their privacy invaded (which we used to have with a Constitution, or a Bill of Rights, and a few Amendments to protect us) until along came someone who felt that his own security was superior to anyone else's in America or even on this planet.

The drive companies will have to act and MAKE firmware safe, secure, and uncorruptible or face the backlash of us finding a company that will do this; a company that sell the drives that can not be infected.

[danbeaver]

Matt,

This is a big point about troubleshooting an Amiga, its frequent crashes could be a weak PSU, failing capacitor, eroded track, or one of the multitude of patches made to the flippin' OS!  Or a tampered with HDD.

As far as the infected HDD firmware goes, this was another (NSA/TSA/Homeland/Fatherland Security Act) large scale effort that now uncovered, will lead to the Snowden Effect of people finding ways to make sure they are not having their privacy invaded (which we used to have with a Constitution, or a Bill of Rights, and a few Amendments to protect us) until along came someone who felt that his own security was superior to anyone else's in America or even on this planet.

The drive companies will have to act and MAKE firmware safe, secure, and uncorruptible or face the backlash of us finding a company that will do this; a company that sells the drives that can not be infected.

[XDelusion]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to stereotype anyone.  In truth, I have respect for their convictions and society.  I enjoy visiting their communities (trying not to be a tourist) when I pass through.

 I laugh because before I worked with them, I had pretty much the same perception of them as you did. I don't offend easy.

[danbeaver]

Found this quote on Ars Technica: "While it's simple for end users to re-flash their hard drives using executable files provided by manufacturers, it's just about impossible for an outsider to reverse engineer a hard drive, read the existing firmware, and create malicious versions."

The article has a lot of interesting, if not somewhat sad, information.  How long was that shrub in office?

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-omnipotent-hackers-tied-to-the-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/

[ChuckT]

No, the Feds only give a sh-t about criminal activity; those feeling threatened by the thought of lost privacy can do all of the above I mentioned sans the criminal stuff.  You can run Linux from a cheap thumb drive logged into a public network.

Actually, if you are ever accused, they start looking at your online activity and what you look at.
Attitudes are changing where you are 49% innocent.

And there is an article online that Google is allegedly going to make people's private pictures public and they can do it because once you upload or post something, it becomes the property of the website and buried in the language is your permission to do so.

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/dick-pics/

[vidarh]

Anyone read this news?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2884952/equation-cyberspies-use-unrivaled-nsastyle-techniques-to-hit-iran-russia.html

The ability for malware to start doing this type of thing makes me want to curl up in a ball with my trusty old VIC-20 and its datasette.

I realize that it's describing malware on the level of inter-country espionage, but this type of knowledge trickles down eventually.

It does not trickle down, it is there already. Not quite script-kiddie ready, thankfully, but the info is out there:

http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack

Also notice from that article that some of our *harddrives* now comes with 3 fairly decent ARM cores. I remember when I was amazed that the SCSI controller for my A2000 had a Z80 on it.

[vidarh]

Found this quote on Ars Technica: "While it's simple for end users to re-flash their hard drives using executable files provided by manufacturers, it's just about impossible for an outsider to reverse engineer a hard drive, read the existing firmware, and create malicious versions."

This would have been funny if it wasn't so tragic that they believed this. I posted this in another comment:

http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack

So much for "just about impossible"

[ChuckT]

This would have been funny if it wasn't so tragic that they believed this. I posted this in another comment:

http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack

So much for "just about impossible"

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/usb-security/

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/embedded-systems/usb-flash-drives-are-more-dangerous-than-you-think

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/31/black_hat_hackers_drive_truck_through_hole_in_usb_security/

[Linde]

I remember when I was amazed that the SCSI controller for my A2000 had a Z80 on it.

Even the 1541 disk drive had a 6502 CPU... I believe it even had a slightly higher clock speed than the 6510 in the C64.

[giZmo350]

Even the 1541 disk drive had a 6502 CPU... I believe it even had a slightly higher clock speed than the 6510 in the C64.

And that's why us old timers back in the day called 1541's "smart drives"!

Back in the day.......
Q - "What's wrong with this 1541?"
A - "pull those damn SCR's and test 'em with a VOM!" :roflmao:

LOL, we didn't need transistor checkers back then...

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Even the 1541 disk drive had a 6502 CPU... I believe it even had a slightly higher clock speed than the 6510 in the C64.

And 2K of memory!  You could write viruses that would work on it!  :roflmao:

[Tenacious]

And 2K of memory!  You could write viruses that would work on it!  :roflmao:

How many bytes is Stuxnet?  Did I spell it correctly?

[klx300r]

Well, you can always use those compromised drives in an Amiga. The malware won't have a damn clue what to do with 68K and Amiga APIs!

:hammer:security by obscurity

[danbeaver]

{Disk copy protection software ran in the 2K of the 1541, which actually transferred data slower than the 1540, and since the 6510 speed was tied to the C64's color, the 6510 either ran slower or the color was washed out}

[danbeaver]

Here's one to add grist to the mill:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/199614-nsa-gchq-colluded-to-steal-sim-encryption-keys-for-millions-of-phones-possibly-including-yours