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New Two-Headed Hard Drive Intended To Secure Web Sites
dlur writes: "This article states that Scarabs (In Japanese), a Japanese company, is developing a hard drive with two heads, one read-only and another that is read/write. With this comes two cables, the read-only side going to the external web server, and the r/w cable going to an internal protected server. While this should make it quite a bit tougher for script kiddies to place their mark on a page, I doubt it will stop any real hackers from getting to a site's DB as that would still need to be r/w."
Or you could put a switch on IDE pin 23, the write line. Flipping the switch to disconnect the line would prevent any data from being written, while still having the higher speeds and lower seek times of a hard drive.
It would be simple to just flip the switch, modify your files and then switch it back when you are done so no changes can be made later.
Even better, put it on an electronic keyswitch mounted on the front of the box, and you have an effective security system for things like demo stations and kiosks.
Great.
/. ever taken a security class? /. ever worked in on security projects and/or audits?
Now, we have to explain one more thing to VCs and MBAs. All they know is there is this thing called a website that exists on a thing called a webserver.
Hasn't anyone on
Has anyone on
Let me break it down for the rest of you:
This ads exactly zero extra security for a well-run website. Most well-run sites already have seperately firewall'd http-webservers and database machines. Some well-run sites have the application server on yet a third firewall'd network (or vlan etc).
Any place worth 5cents will not have valued data sitting on an httpd server!
This is really Ooooga-Boooga in a nutshell for VCs and MBAs trying to make a buck on security-scared VCs and MBAs running other companies.
I don't buy it.
Secure your site properly - as one other poster mentioned, for the less-funded (read: cheap/poor/startup/blah) company/service you can simply mount a CD-R with your site's static content on it. Even JSPs can live on a CDr (as long as they're precompiled into servlets, or there's a scratch disk for the JSP-container to compile them).
It shouldn't be too difficult to add a second arm, that wouldn't interfere with the primry R/W head. Of course it does double the chances of a head-crash... This is the way that it appears to be being done according to the web site
Nice in theory, but it won't fly. Two arms means replicating some of the most expesive parts of the drive all over again. Double electronics (servo, preamp, channel) because you wouldn't get reaonable SNR trying to share them, more flex cables, more of those nasty suspension systems, arm motors, etc. You could share the backend of the uprocessor (although it'd require a serious upgrade of the processors we use now since none of them have the umph to do a read and servo calcs at the same time), buffer RAM (although you'd need an increase in that, too, to handle two streams), motor driver, platter, motor, and the controller, but other than that you need to replicate many very expensive parts again. I'd guess you'd increase the cost by 50% or more. The idea's floated around the industry before and prototypes have been built, but in the end the performance boost for the cost wasn't there and no such drive had made it into production.
WD made the bigger buffer because it was cheap. Adding RAM isn't hard and with RAM prices its cheap. Doubling the front end is a nasty, expensive business.
-- veni vidi nuclei deceri --- I came, I saw, I dumped core.