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Stash Your Hard Drive In The Attic
RegardsSJ writes "Robert X. Cringley on his PBS website mentions a $479 wireless, fanless 120gb network storage/file server appliance (running linux) in his column. He thinks the killer app for this one is for keeping your porn storage hidden, if you're busted by the cops. I think his concept is weak, given the wireless signal is traceable (security through obscurity?), WEP is breakable, and the fact that you have to have the thing plugged in somewhere... The company selling the device is martian.com. Anybody use one?" Now that it's possible to stream audio and video through various boxes originally serving other purposes (like TiVo and PlayStation2), this looks like a good companion piece, too.
Why not just stuff it under your mattress? They'll never find it there...
I am over here... now I am back over here!
Since when is having porn illegal?
Ummm... I didn't see any child-porn-storage type of usage mentioned on the website. How about the millions of people who could theoretically be shut away for their "illegal" mp3 collection?
:) Also, perhaps better encryption with a smart-card at the PC you could remove and destroy. Then it would be a perfect product for terrorists and pedophiles alike ...and perhaps normal people who don't want anyone seizing their data.
If only it came with a self-destruct mechanism, it might overcome the shortcomings you mentioned
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
would you want to hide your porn collection, unless you're a paedophile?
Hide the porn from the cops? It's more like hide the porn from the wife.
hm... where did I hide my HD from the police again? :-(
You could actually put it _in_ you neighbour's house... where there's a will (and p0rn is a hell of a will) there's a way!
What kind of conspiracy theory "my neighbour framed me" would stand up in court.
Remember... most criminals are stupid, they are nothing compared with a geek's cunning!!!
Is anybody afraid of all this radiation that we are surrounding ourselves with? Sitting in front of a computer all day is bad enough but everywhere you go there is more spectrum in use. I love the idea of a wireless world but I hope our kids don't come out looking blue.
I've seen reports that cell phones can noticeably heat up the users brain (seriously!). Anything concrete yet on the overall effect?
would be to store the heat-producing noisy things in a different room than the humans.
(Perhaps this is mentioned in the article. I can't tell because their webserver is on fire.)
Both at home and at work, I'm tired of noisy machines. I work to minimize the noise. I'd love to just say, "fuck it, be as noisy as you want," as I lovingly place all the equipment on the other side of a wall, leaving nothing but a monitor and the input devices in front of me.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Why don't you just put up in your neighbors attic? That's obscurity...I'd put it in the trunk of my car, since that appears to be where I keep half my crap anyways..
Hiding pr0n (or anything) is the killer app for excellent encryption, not for a WEP-accessed drive array. ::obligatory plug:: OS X lets you create read/write/mountable disk image files that are encrypted with AES-128. Very cool stuff to play with.
;)
Just don't put its password in your keychain, or those feds will get a chuckle as they double-click the image file and it unlocks with your autologin.
1) Buy wireless AP 2) Get fast-assed broadband 3) Encourage neigbours to buy wifi cards to access your broadband connection And the rest writes itself!
It's illegal porn if it's a porno of yourself or others downloading mp3s and movies.
I am a filthy pirate.
Just because it's fanless doesn't mean it generates no heat. In fact, free airflow is probably more important than with forced-air cooling. I've seen plenty of complaints about how hot that fanless Apple cube box could get.
Covering the box with insulation and putting it in a 140 degree F attic sounds like a sure-fire way to fry the system. I would be surprised if it's not a fire hazard as well.
Buy a Celeron, MB and 128 MB of RAM and a HDD etc and build your own Samba box. This is much cheaper than the product advertised and easily upgradeable - buy an extra HDD or setup Raid on it.
If you can wire a plug to a electrical box in the basement, enclose the box beams after mounting this to the floor add an 802.11g interface with an 802.11g access point above it, (and add a bit more storage to the device) you could do set up a wired network with thin clients throughout your house, and never have to worry about anyone taking off with your systems.
Granted you would probably want to use the most recent and strongest varient of WEP, and if possible waveguide your area between the AP and the server to reduce attacks, but if you build it properly, they can set up everything they take from your house, and won't have a bootable system, and you can go to a swap meet or computer recycler and pick up enough hw to go back and wipe your server before they start tearing apart the finish of the house.
That's if you are paranoid.
-Rusty
You never know...
Or, head over to mini-itx.com and dig around for info on other cases and whatnot.
My attic gets very hot in the summer. There's no way a hard drive would survive a month there. The basement is a much better place since it'll stay cooler all year round.
What kind of videos do you make with your DVCam?
Wouldn't a hidden server using power line communication be more secure? Either way it still has to be plugged. This reduces the number of links down to one.
"I would, for one, but my friend David from the UK points out that such a device hidden away from sight would be ideal for storing data you wouldn't want confiscated by the police. Nestle a Martian box under your attic insulation if you have something to hide. "
Who knows what the people at PBS have to hide from the cops.
Yeah, but who would want one of these things? I would, for one, but my friend David from the UK points out that such a device hidden away from sight would be ideal for storing data you wouldn't want confiscated by the police.
The author doesn't mention porn in his article... get your minds out of the gutter
Cringely did not say anything about porn. He said: such a device hidden away from sight would be ideal for storing data you wouldn't want confiscated by the police."
If you have the kind of porn that has to be hidden from police, you belong in jail. But I wouldnt' want anyone to find the plans to the death star...
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I've always thought that a custom ethernet connector that looks exactly like a power outlet would work well. Hide the HD in the wall, run the Cat5 to the 'outlet'. Then you just need a length of cat5 with bare ends to plug into the 'outlet'. Cops raid your place, you yank the network cable, and it lays therelooking lik, well, a cut up cat5 cable. As long as no cop trys to plug in a lamp...
Maybe hiding something like this in your attic wouldn't work out if the police turned your house over, but it would almost certainly survive if you got your house burgled - I doubt that many burglars take the time (or even think) to look in the attic.
All the cops have to do is to get a court order to intercept your transmissions. Than have the manufacture of the encrytion break it.
You only need 180GB?
Wow. Slashdot has monks now.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Police have been known to sieze computers that simply had data that might be used as evidence, even when the owners hadn't done anything wrong. Is there any legal defense against this, like "I have my website, my financial records, and tomorrow's homework on that fileserver... you can't take it away from me!"? Or does this come under the heading of "why you should always have multiple good backups"?
According to the FAQ, it uses Rendezvous (aka ZeroConf) for advertising printer capability and the setup page. Great use of free technology.
Don't hide one in your house. Instead, find a nice hidden spot with good reception and a power socket in random places - at work, at the local mall, underneath bridges, in parks, etc. Mark the location with a GPS, and use them as random access points/neighborhood file repositories.
The idea is to create a decentralized, accessible, but non-connected freenet centered around a sort of "dead-drop" concept. If you want to distribute something, drive around town uploading to these file repositories, and hopefully leechers that frequent these spots will pass the data on.
Of course, if you wanted to network these units, all you have to do is plop one somewhere, then train a box with a wired connection at them and set up a bridge - so you can use them either way. I like the cloak-and-dagger method myself... it seems cooler 8)
I built something just like this for my parents. They are both wireless now with laptops for each of them. When my older bro and I went home for xmas a few months ago we each brough all the parts we needed to make it happen. Our xmas gift to our parents was this file server (among other things).
The rationale was this: as my parents move to digital cameras and start scanning in older things, our family albums will increasingly be digital, rather than a chest full of pictures. Since preserving this data is important to me I decided that we should have a 'Family Digital Library'. Now they store all kinds of stuff on there, and I expect that we'll be adding more disks to in the coming years.
Secret file storage? Nah... Family Library? YES.
Ok, if you hide your file server in your attic, it will be found with difficulty. Still, if the cops really want to find it, they'll just come with radio tracking equipment! 802.11 transmitters should be easily located.
Not that it matters to anyone. Clearly from reading the comments here, the porn angle was the way to go to get this widely read (not the Cringely article, obviously, just the slashblurb).
But, Cringely talks about hiding data . And, yes, current consumer wireless tech is a poor fit to the task of
securing data, but that will change.
Personally, I just like the plug-and-play, out-of-sight storage idea. You could, very seriously, drop this in any closet with electrical outlets and serve up media/storage to a host of gadgets in your house. For current implementations, I'd worry about robustness (can I really just turn it on and forget about it till the drive dies?). I know my damn wireless router gets all screwed up if I try to activate MAC address controls.
The best way to keep anything hidden from anybody is to keep them from ever knowing it existed in the first place - if they already know, or suspect, then it's already too late.
Sure, you might have your super-leet miniserver stuck in your heating ducts, powered by a little mini-windmill and linked via 802.11g to your house, with an emergency "shut up for 24 hours" command, and that might keep it from being found in a cursory search. But if the cops really think you have something on a computer in your house that is worth finding, they will find it. They will keep searching until they do, even if it takes days.
So the day after you are hauled downtown, one of the forensics team says "Hey, there's a signal here on 5GHz - get the spec-an in here and let's DF that puppy."
Now, if you used strong encryption, you might keep them from knowing what is on the disk, but find it they will. And they can compel you to provide the key - even here in the US, all they have to do is say "Fine - we won't charge you based on anything we find." That "poofing" sound was your 5th Amendment right becoming irrelevant - you can no longer incriminate yourself, so you can no longer refuse to testify and be protected. Continue to refuse, and they find you in contempt of court and lock you up until you change your mind.
Robert Heinlein made the point in "If This Goes On..." that the best thing in the world is to let them find something bad, but not bad enough to get you into trouble. So, if you are plotting the overthrow of the known world, you keep that info a deep, dark secret tattooed on the inside of your eyelids encrypted with a 4096 bit key, but you keep your goat porn on a drive they will find (with a little looking). Then, when they think you are hiding something and find the drive, they look a little longer, don't find anything, and move on.
But once again, the big trick is not to arouse suspicions in the first place. If they knock on the door, you've already lost.
www.eFax.com are spammers
This is just an Epia Mini-ITX motherboard in a bog standard Morex Cubid Mini-ITX case. I have both sat here on my desk and its a great little silent linux server.
They cost a lot less to buy what this company wants to charge you. Sure they added wireless card/hard drive/memory but $500 still seems a bit expensive.
Check out http://www.mini-itx.com for details of the motherboard / case. They also have an online store for Europeans...
BTW, you can easily get 2 hard drives in that case if you take out the included hd enclosure so you could make one with a lot more space than 120gb...
I think longer cables for your mouse, keyboard, monitor, and speakers would be better -- then you could get the entire noisy machine, fans and all, out of your room and into the attic.
evil adrian
After all, the cops, even though they have a warrant and some sort of indication that you have illegal material, will probably just give up without looking in the attic. I mean, who would think someone might hide stuff up there? I learned this trick from the "porn computer in the attic article."
I wish you were right, but I doubt that a judge would hold you any less in contempt for failing to hand over an encryption key than for failing to hand over the keys to a strong box for which there was a search warrant. Except the strong box can be easily broken into without the key--in the case of an encryption key, the defendant has to be broken.
until they find it. I mean seriously. He could encrypt it too. It's not like hiding it is going to hurt in any way.
Maybe that's the only sort of data that
http://milkshake.dexy.org
eew... only 802.11b?
Nuts to that... you wouldn't dream of using a wired 10Mb connection when 100Mb (or even 1Gb) is available... so why use an (at best) 11Mb? And don't bother to say price, because then you obviously haven't been to Best Buy lately...
If they were smart they would have stuck a PC Card or USB wireless adapter in there... even just as an internal thing... that way they could update... it's not like they didn't see the a/g spec coming!
He thinks the killer app for this one is for keeping your porn storage hidden, if you're busted by the cops.
There is no mention of storing porn in the linked article. It suggests hiding data from the cops. Thanks to your thoughtless editorializing in the submission, half the posts here are off-topic. A simple skim of the article by an editor would have caught this. Anyone want to point me to the subscriptions page now?
So if you want to prevent anyone from knowing you have something to hide, you broadcast it over the most insecure protocols known to man in a computer with no other plausable use "hidden" in open space? Did he used to work for a Savings and Loan?
The ______ Agenda
Ahh... to think of a computer with no wires is a dream. Wireless mouse, keyboard, and internet are just a few that I have. Soon I'll be able to put those trash ties to some other use than bundling my cords.
Bury a fanless computer six feet down in the back yard. Run power and cat-5 into the garage. Add physical intrusion detection. By the time the police figure out where the cable leads, the thermite charges packed around the hard drives have done their work and there's nothing to find but a glass-encased lump of slag.
If anyone's interested, thermite is actually very easy to make. Igniting it from the computer would probably require a multi-stage ignition, though - say, electric match to black powder to magnesium strip to thermite. And you'd want to make sure the ignition signal didn't get accidentally flipped on reboot or core dump or anything. =]
Encryption's all well and good, but you've got to keep the keys somewhere. Just try recovering data from a hard drive when you can't identify which lump of metal IS the hard drive.
Just use the drug dealer's trick. Don't hide it in your house, hide it outside your house in some publicly accessable area. Yes, it leaves the device more vulnerable but it also leaves you less culpable since it wasn't in your posession.
An electronic device that needs power is trickier, but a wireless device mitigates some of that since you don't even have to touch it to use it. The right kind of device could run for a long time without external power (batteries, solar) or the right hiding place could provide it with power (hidden in wall, behind an outlet or something).
The only long wire you need is ethernet. As many have noticed, you can put all the noisy things in a room by themselves. All you need for a terminal is an old P90 laptop. X forward via ssh and never worry about noise again. Long wires for keyboards and VGA and all only useful if you are running an OS that has poor networking software or lack a quiet one.
On the other hand you could just buy one of these $500 gizmos and never fool with boxes in a closet again. If I were stupid rich, I might.
My choice is neither! I've already got the boxes. I'm too cheap to buy a replacement and too lazy to move them into a closet. I do, however have my laptop set up in another room on a desk where I can read and write to dead trees. Quiet is nice from time to time, but the machine noise does not bother me.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"...Scandinavia are the greatest child-porn production areas in the world"
Yeah, but Scandinavia is a clean, efficient, well-run collection of countries. Denmark has some of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. The people there are intelligent and charming.
America, on the other hand...
> Christian U.S. where we depose dictators
Heh! You clearly know *nothing* about American foreign policy over the last 50 odd years.
In which was is that even remotely similar logic?
Oh, and all analogy is fraud.
Assuming you're not a troll, no
Personally, I keep my hard drive in my pants.. to each their own I guess. :o)
First, thermite doesn't explode. It reacts quickly and violently, with extremely high heat. The parent poster was right, a multistage computer controlled ignition system would work and be tits.
For those you who think it burns and/or requires oxygen, your wrong. This is the equation for a thermite reaction:
Fe2O3(s) + 2AL(s) -> AL2O3 + 2Fe + energy
That's right. Powdered aluminum and powdered rust make thermite. It's ignition temperature is so high that it is normally lit with burning magnesium metal. It reacts so hot that a small amount (like a kilo) can melt a hole through the engine block of a car and keep going through the concrete. That'll definitely be suffucient to melt your porno.
you can stream audio and video through your PS2? how may i ask? unless you mean with the linux kit, but thats a lil bit different.
That's why you encrypt in such a way that you can give them a password and it will decrypt some things, but it still won't decrypt the "interesting stuff", whatever that may be in your case.
See Rubberhose for one possible implementation of this idea.
I think the perfect solution to that would be to hide the device (say, in the crawl space under the house if you have it, far away from the entry to the crawl space to make it even more difficult to find), connect it to power through an X10 module and just hit the off switch when the police come knocking on the door. no wireless signel. no wires going near it, save the AC line that was already there that you tapped into. no reason to tear up the floor to find it.
Just my two centsEverybody seems to want to pull this into the
extreme, by mentioning police, feds etc.
I think a more normal, and more common cause would be simple protection for thieves:
- They have to work quickly in general.
- They are relatively low tech
- They are after the hardware, not the data. (why search the house for a $400 appliance for which they probably don't even get $100
So simple separating the visible part to of your
computers from the storage/data as far as thieves are concerned.
Target: normal, ordinary people with important records: dentist, doctors, some journalists, politicians (including local, often worth a lot of money to real-estate entrepeneurs) etc.
Am I the only one who's attic is about 110 deg F or higher in the summer?
Can't see something with no fans surviving long in the attic. Now in the winter, heck yeah, but in the summer?
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
How about MacOS X? (I do use cryptoapi under Linux, but my colleague uses OS X)
He thinks the killer app for this one is for keeping your porn storage hidden, if you're busted by the cops.
So porn is illegal in the United States? That explains why everybody is so trigger happy!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
the only truly good security is abstinence. Remove the wireless card, unplug your net connection, and disconnect the power supply. Nobody can root your box then.
- passion
To tell you, in basic terminology, the looseness of correspondance the 5th ammendment of the Constitution of the united States of America:
You are not required to provide an answer to a Police Officer(s)' request for information.
You are not required to give them information!
You are not required to answer a question!
You are not required to incriminate yourself!
You are not required to incriminate another person!
You are not required to provide any information about another person!
IF THEY SAY YOU MUST GIVE THEM INFORMATION, TELL THEM THEY ARE BREAKING THE LAW AND SHOVE THAT RED PEN UP THEIR ASSHOLE!
BE AWARE OF ANY AND ALL INFORMATION YOU _VOLUNTEER_ AND BE AWARE OF YOUR PERCEPTION TO THE "POLICE OFFICER" (they are slandering and libelous bastards at taking notes on your physical/emotional appearance).
NEVER SPEAK WITHOUT THE COUNCIL OF SOMEONE WHO KNOWS THE LAW!
TO SEIZE PROPERTY, THEY MUST FIRST PROVIDE A NOTICE/REQUEST TO SEIZE THE PROPERTY ALONG WITH A _PROBABLE_CAUSE_ (not just "Probable Cause"), AND IF YOU DO NOT _VOLUNTEER_ TO THEIR REQUEST FOR EVIDENCE THEN YOU TELL THEM TO GET A WARRANT. THEY CANNOT ISSUE A WARRANT BEFORE FIRST INQUIRING TO YOU WITH AN INITIAL REQUEST/NOTICE.
If they do otherwise than what the LAW OF THE LAND, Common Law and Constitution of the united States of America, then you will understand that they are NOT operating under the LAW OF THE LAND. Do not confuse municipal corporation laws (local, county, state, etc) with the LAW OF THE LAND (Common Law and Constitution of the united States of America).
When your secured rights are violated, then you will obviously wonder where the fuck all your slanderous neighbors went. Why do they turn a blind eye to your private property and humanity, and always suspect:
"Gosh, that always looked suspicious and was quite...he must have done somthing to deserve the police on his doorstep. Hope they turn him strait! Heil Commander-In-Chief!"
YOU AND I ARE THE PRINCIPLE, We the People, THAT OF WHICH CORRECTS THOSE THAT BREAK LAWS THEY HAVE CONTRACTUALY OPERATED UPON. PERHAPS NOW YOU KNOW WHY THERE IS A "FREEMEN OF MONTANA".
Just be sure to write a script into your .bash_logout that wipes your .bash_history & all relevant log files...
Not that I've done this or anything...
Wonder if I should have posted this anonymously...
LFS. Have you built your system today?
if you're american don't read the following since it could be used to hide information from 'the man' and such is terroristic activity.*bad humour to half mode*
because most of the time the cops won't bother snooping around totally, and in other countries than usa they might not have the right to stay at the computer and look whats going on once they bust you (basically, they can't alter the data, so they can't keep it on, or don't even have anyone available who would be able to figure it out). and i would bet that still most of the busts(the actual seizing of the machines) are held by not very geeky officers. and such hw is easy to place at your neighbours house or where ever, just make sure you got lots of other suspicious computers to seize. why would one want this privacy is his own thing(for one, it's not certain you will get your hw back as it is, even if you are innocent)..
not that hiding cd's was that difficult either, but that would involve too much running around the house.
though, using home-pna could prove out to be more convinient/cheaper and wouldnt involve wireless sniffing possibility, and you could place that out of sight pretty easily too.
i would put the machine inside a cast-beton case that had it's own ups inside that(that when disconnected would start to wipe the hd), and that would explode the innards if opened or wrong button pressed(while at it have the hd's spinning open without top covers and have some good goo/acid flow on them..), and while at it have it built into houses base too.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I would think the killer app would be running a nice quiet diskless machine in your office and stashing the noisy drives elsewhere in your home.
But then, I suppose I would need to load all of my CDs into it so that I'd never have to deal with CD drivenoise, which is way more annoying.
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
The case they used seems to be a Morex Cubid 2688R, thus the 1980's VCR look ;) However, this page of Mini-ITX compatible cases has several more attractive designs...
They may not have "all the rech"
but they can easily bring along a
signal strength meter in the appropriate band
and wander around until they find the source
Powerline would be the answer.. how do you track that down?
just to figure out which branch it's on would require
tripping each circuit breaker one at a time until you know.
Then you have to rip out all the walls
bury it in your neighbors yard, tapped into his electricity, and they'll never find it
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Surprised its not been mentioned before. Assuming its 802.11b, I get 5MBps speeds right next to the AP. In a room next door with my laptop I get 2MBps over wifi. A room further away is an erratic 0.5MBps.
Now a 120GB hard drive over a wireless link? Possibly enough to stream DivX, forget about DVD, and to fill the drive would take over two days!
I can't beleive someone put this much effort into trying to hide their porn. Jeez. All these ideas of hiding porn across the border and underground with secret rooms and compartments. I mean, if James Bond had a bunch of porn and stuff, I'm sure he'd do this stuff, but c'mon, do you really need to hide it that well? I remember back in the days where you could just hide a CD-R in a cd case, and write a band on it, and that would be way more than enough.
Porn is illegal??? :-s
What kind of porn are you into buddy?
Slashdot - The one stop shop for procrastination
"As a result, whenever a server fails at Google, THEY DO NOTHING. They don't replace the broken machine. They don't remove the broken machine. They don't even turn it off. In an army of drones, it isn't worth the cost of labor to locate and replace the bad machines. Hundreds, maybe thousands of machines lie dead, uncounted among the 10,000 plus."
Is this common knowledge? Great concept. In the long run I'd think they would be better off running blade computers to save power and reduce heat etc.
Tieing back to the subject... Network Attached Storage is the way of the future. Ultimately I'd rather have everything online somewhere where is it getting backed up properly. If I have to keep the data in my house at all I'd certainly rather it be on a specialized device that does one thing and does it well rather than on a Windows machine where it is at the mercy of the latest service pack.
I experimenting with various uses. It was a poor DVR DVR, due to the limited CPU and the small HDDs back then; it was an okay MP3 server but sometimes hiccuped if playing songs locally while streaming to other machines; NT-150 hackers still use the smart card slot for satellite card hacking, but that wasn't my gig.
It eventually became the least powerful CPU in my junkbox, but I liked its small, silent form factor and hated to trash its other capabilities. With a few components, I added an IR data reciever. the transfer rate never reached 10Mbps, but it was faster than the wireless networks of the time.
In the 70's, when lasers diodes ran $10+ surplus, hobbyists routinely used IR LEDs to communicate 100s of meters. A cluster of today's high-powered IR LEDs might reach a km or more (the transmitter needn't be directional if it's bright (illuminate a 6" translucent plastic cap and make the reciever directional with a cheap lens+tube focused on the emitter. Imagine, for example, a detector with a 1" dia "directional" tube fixed high in a tree on a distant hill, connected by RF or camouflaged wire to a buried server.
To be really clever, plant a second set-top box, filled with legal but embarrassing material in your backyard. When the cops "persuade" you to surrender the device, they won't suspect the existence of the real one.
As a matter of fact, I never got around to getting it back from the distant tree I used for range testing. If the battery weren't long since dead, I might give it a spin. Sure, rain, fog, and foliage would be problems over time, but depending on your location, you might be able to find a suitable location (e.g. the roof of a distant building). Power is also a problem, but the NT-150's current 10W draw could easily be handled by a small solar cell charging a battery (it'd charge 8-16 hours a day, but would probably only be used a few minutes a day) and even building technicians are hesitant to mess with unknown devices.
(The Stazi kept a covert surveillance station in Prague's old clock tower, but never gave a second thought to a wiring box along the power lines they ran up the tower stairway. It recently was found to contain a radio relay believed to be have been used by the KGB to relay small local KGB bugs to a Soviet office downtown. The KGB stole Stazi power because the tower -perfect for a relay- wasn't otherwise electrified, and they did not want to inform the Stazi about their local bugs)
This was, and is, beginner-level hardware hacking. It costs more in ingenuity than cash.
I like companies that have these kinds of quotes in their FAQ's.
"Does your device use Rendezvous (aka ZeroConf) to make it easier to use?
Yup! We advertise the location of the NetDrive's setup web page on your network via Rendezvous. We also support connecting to the NetDrive's printer sharing feature via Rendezvous printing. We think Rendezvous is a really cool technology, and as we add more Rendezvous-related features, we'll roll them out as software updates to our users."
With more and more devices supportign ZeroConf, (apple, tivo, this, some printers) - networking is going to hopefully finally get a lot easier. what other rendezvous features could be added?
You could find some wire, wrap it around your server room doorframe a few times then hook it up to a power supply. Tadah! you've now go an electromagnet that people will need to carry your computer through when they take it away. With any luck they'll turn it on decide the harddrive is blank.
The really clever could add a small solid state boot disk that checked to see if this had happened and made a new, empty, file system on the drive so it didn't look so odd.
PORN.
This is what I did to combat the police problem. I bought several industrial demagnetizers and installed hard drives on the demagnetization surface. The demagnetizers are all attached to a solenoid. Pushing a single switch, which is hidden in a convenient place, immediately and irretrievably destroys all information on the hard drives. (That's because the demagnetizer stays on for the entire time the police are searching the place.) By the way, the information stored on these hard drives is as follows:
- Photographs proving that the women in my family have walked in public without being covered by a tablecloth. (We live in Afghanistan.)
- Videos proving that we have taught children how to read and write.
- MP3s, purchased from the Internet per the intellectual rights requirements of the content provider. (Music is illegal here.)
- Documents that criticize the actions of our local politicians.
No other information is stored on any of our hard drives.I really like Cringely. His Revenge of the Nerds PBS special is good and his book Accidental Empires is essential reading for anyone even close to the tech field. He's a great writer.
But I wouldn't put much weight into his advice or predictions. This is a guy who got into a dispute with a former employer over the rights to his own name, and was an Apple employee in the very early days and turned down stock options in lieu of more pay.
If anything, Cringely is a great storyteller, but not very good at predicting the future or recognizing the best use of technology.
The book "True Names" by V Vinge (now back in print) starts out with a guy talking about how they will bust you if you have too much processing power, storage or bandwidth since only illegal hacker types need that kind of power.
Its also talks about IRCisms which is odd since the book was written long before that happened.
Freudian Slip!
He thinks the killer app for this one is for keeping your porn storage hidden, if you're busted by the cops.
Freudian Slip - Definition: 'An inadvertent mistake in speech or writing that is thought to reveal a person's unconscious motives, wishes, or attitudes.' - Courtesy of The Random House College Dictionary, 1980
"Personally, I keep my hard drive in my pants.. to each their own I guess. :o)"
Disadvantages of having a hard drive in your pants.
1-Warrenty returns are a bitch.
2-You get funny looks everytime you access your hard drive.
3-If it's an IBM Deskstar? You get even stranger looks when a loud screeching, clicking noise comes from your pants. See #1
4-"Chesnuts roasting" is not just limited to Christmas. See #3
5-The comment about how it's just your hard drive winding up get old after having been repeated for the 100th time.
6-Not being able to go out in public without people making comments like "Is that a hard drive in your pants, or you just glad to see me?"
7-The SCSI people laughing at your IDE.
8-The cache is bigger than everything else.
9-That confounded 12v battery you have to run it off of.
10-You learn to loath metal detectors.
Let me get in line first to laugh at the idiot who puts his ultra nasty porn collection on this and finds out the cops downloaded the entire thing as evidence using a laptop and van parked across the street. You know, after your neighbor's 12 year old kid cracks your network password and downloads it all first. You'll get as far in your 'illegal search' argument as the rare idiot drug dealer who openly discusses his product on a cordless phone.
Let's see, doorway wipes the disk if it's taken out, server software wipes the disk if anyone plugs a monitor or keyboard into it, encryption key generated automatically and stored on an RFID chip in a false tooth that's destroyed when you bite down hard ... I think you can probably keep your data secret.
You cannot, at least in the US, be required to assist the cops in collecting evidince agianst you. If you wanted, you could say to the judge that the encrypted stuff would prove you had been doing something illegal. At that point, the equipment would be locked away until the cops figure some way into it.
You might never see your hard drive agian, but at least you wouldn't be in jail.
On a side note, if the cops suspect that the hard drive of one computer is evidince, then they will keep every peice of computer-related equipment you own. A friend of mine had 3 computers, 2 monitors, a printer, a digital camera, and other related stuff taken. They even took a binder of his licensed software and his frickin Game Boy Advanced. All this was so they could analyse a hard disk on one of the computers.
Moral? Expect the cops to coerce you by seizing everything you own.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
I'd just rig a switch over the fileserver. Flip the switch and a magnesium flare ignites a small packet of powdered aluminum over the hard drive. Isn't thermite wonderful?
You might get in trouble for destroying evidince, but if you planned it right, they'd never know there was a WAP in the basement.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
he must be talking about the illegal type of porn such as kiddy porn. why would one need to hide porn from the cops? if anything people would hide porn from ones wife/children/family
I've got some porn. Actually, quite a lot of it. It's on my hard drive.
Now the cops can threaten me with revealing my secret porn empire and I'll just yawn and say "old news, and nobody cares."
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K Don't you mean Crow T. Robot, MS Server3K?
If there weren't so many damn idiots in this world, I'd just be average.
Such a setup is nice mostly because it keeps noisy disk drives out of your living room and doesn't require cabling.
However, last I checked, porn was still legal in the US, so there is no reason to hide it. However, if you keep illegal pornography (violating copyright or child pornography laws), just get rid of it--one might argue that US laws are paranoid and silly, but that's an argument to be made in the legislatures, not from behind bars. The FBI may not be at the forefront of technology, but they aren't completely stupid either, and they probably have seen it all before.
In Ashcrofts new police state, your wife will be the cops. I forgot, are we in a war against Eurasia and in an alliance with Eastasia, or is it the other way around?
No it doesn't, it actually quotes a dept. of justice spokesman as saying that Ashcroft has nothing to do with the decision "because he has more important things to worry about." Big difference.
Now, wheter you choose to belive said spokesperson is another matter entirely. If it's really as people here say, that photographers have been bending over themselves to get the shot with conservative Ashcroft in the foreground and breast in the bakground (what is it with you americans and breasts anyway), I'd be very surprised if Ashcroft wasn't driving the change. To be a high ranking politician in one of the most cut-throat environments in the world, and not worry or care enough about your public image (or the perception of said, at best a distraction as someone else here said) to control a photo op such as this one, would be naive to say the least.
To think that someone like Ashcroft has gotten this far without managing his image carefully is naive as well.
Now, whether Ashcroft made this particular decision himself, or actually has people on staff to do it for him is less of an issue, he's still the man behind it, he has to be. That's not to say that it's unbelievable he did. Politicians usually look to image first (i.e. tend to it themselves), and the rest second (IMHO), so this is indeed an issue that I'd be surprised if it didn't get run by him.
Stefan Axelsson
To champion the idea of hidden data:
- have the data store power down when other end is broken, inc. turned off
-> then has to be restarted manually.
30 sec timeout enough to beat the feds? perhaps you could have it start destroying the data after 1min? >:)
A blog I run for the wealth
Surely it wouldn't be to hard to role you own? A mini-ITX case with software raid and a couple of 120GB disk with a wireless card in the back. External CD-ROM if necessary and thats about it. Remote admin and redundancy
Simple
rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Ashcroft in the foreground and breast in the bakground (what is it with you americans and breasts anyway)
Oh, I don't know... Maybe it's because I relied on them for my very survival since a very early age, like, since birth? Everyone is obsessed with breasts. Men want them. Women want them. Breasts are absolutely beautiful. What does this have to do with anything?
And as far as Ashcroft, he is a fuck. A disgusting, evil piece of shit. any decision he makes is against the wishes of the good people of the United States. He needs to be punished for his crimes, as should all of the president's lackeys (john poindexter, you're a fucking war criminal, you bastard).
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
If users of cell phones are less likely to get cancer, this means that the microwaves HAVE an effect. If this effect exists, then it MUST be investigated.
Clearly, the potential effect is not related with heat disipation, 1W is small compared with the energy gains due to solar radiation impinging in the head in summer.
The potentially dangerous effect is related with the interaction of the microwaves with the complex biochemistry in the brain. And this is not known yet.
We have plenty of examples of possible hazards to public health that were underestimated and then they become a problem.
Serious, independent research must be carried out. It must be payed by public institutions, not by manufactures of cell phones or wireless devices. The results must be published in serious, peer-reviewed journals.
Well, that was my point exactly. Here in Europe, an attorney general with a semi nude statue in the backdrop would be no big deal.
I remember watching news footage from the rivera on US TV, and all the brests were covered over by a black little strip (you know, the kind that usually covers eyes of criminal suspects and the like). I laughed my ass off all the while my american hosts couldn't understand what was so funny. Topless on the beach is no big deal here.
Now, if you're so obsessed with them, why do you insist on having to have them covered up all the time?
Stefan Axelsson
Yeah, and I hear that you can download ANYTHING as long as you only keep it for 24 hours. So as long as you download it, keep it for 23 hours, and then delete it and download it again, you never have to pay for software! Ever!
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
If you're interested in hacking your NetDrive to do other stuff, send us an email at dev@martian.com and we'll see about getting you the right info /. crowd needs. Everyone's a winner : they won't sue you because you hack the device, and they get free developpers for future versions ! Who said commercial products had to be closed source and overly protected ?
At last a company that understands the
Not often any more. Many ISPs these days intentionally DON'T keep these kinds of logs so they can avoid getting these kinds of subpoenas. The way they see it, it costs them time and money. By not keeping the records, they can just say "sorry, we'd love to help, but we just don't have the info you need".
I can't speak for all ISPs, but I've delt with at 2 that I know of that have this policy for this very reason.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
I don't know about all the rest of you, but my sensitive data is all kept on a spare drive, packed into 3-DES/RC6/Blowfish (depends on my mood) archives which are then stored on convenient 4.37-GB AES-encrypted disk images (thanks apple!).
Give it your best shot, Herr Asscrack.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
The feds will get an even bigger chuckle while you rot in jail for contempt
Depending what's on my drive (or more accurately what they want to find on the drive), I might rather just sit in jail on a contempt charge. But that's just me.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
A computer using a wireless HD would have at least some small bits of stored protocol info for interfacing with the HD, wouldn't it? So a confiscated computer might not have incriminating files on it, but would contain a big message for the feds saying: go back to the house, you forgot something... People are lazy, I can't imagine anyone entering their WEP code every time they want to look at boobies.
My Ex-Router was kept in the loft/attic. Stable as rock she was. Until one day.. I went down to the beach one fine summers day, the temperature climbed and climbed. Oh S#^T!! It was too late :@
Like hell I'm gonna blow $500 on something else that could meet a similar fate. Then again I dont live in Alaska :(
Now, if you're so obsessed with them, why do you insist on having to have them covered up all the time?
For the same reason slashdot insists on all software being free, while slashdot insists on getting big salaries for programming jobs: the United States is not a monolithic entity. I admit the dichotomy can be humourous or sad, but it does exist. I would argue that the heat created by the friction of various groups is what drives the country. And is perhaps the intent of our much cherished and revered first amendment. Although the rights guaranteed by it are often subject to the whims of politicians listening to the hordes of soccer moms.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
My main desire for using these is to prevent my data from being lost (and personal stuff getting into the wrong hands) if my PC is stolen.
Check it out:
http://www.technolumiere.com/personal/ultimate_pc_ setup.html
Andrew Chapman
and If you blow out all the candles on your birthday cake with the first puff you will get your wish.
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
those kids that were raided by the police for hacking their broadband had their computers taken, and as far as I know they were never returned, so that just goes to show you that you don't necessarily need to have illegal files for the police to take your PC.
And yes, I believe "security through obscurity" would work very well if the police did raid your place, I don't think they turn the PC on and search the network for wireless connections, they simply remove every biege box with wires protruding from them.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I could see this more common. I'd like a Media Distributor in the house. Connect my cable, phone, DSL, etc to a black box in the basement connnect with network wires or wireless and access all the features from anywhere in the house! I don't see why storage wouldn't be connected the same way. I think the secrecy issues are exagerated over the invisible issues. A black box storage appliance [running ?? OS but not crashing, ever] in the basement is looking like a better option to people as they have data for years-moving it from PC-to-PC is a continuing lesson in futility--that's why most offices went to central servers years ago--home users are discovering the same thing!
Thermite plates in the top with neat little safety pins and rings to pull.
The idea was that when the "evil horde" came into over run the facility you smartly yank the rings and the resulting incendiary mess melts down through the cabinet/safe turning the contents into nothing recognizable.