bose@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (09/20/88)
There is a program advertized on the back of PCMag called: "hands of the program". It is a software based system that prevents unauthorized access to the hard disk. Does anyone have any experience with this software?
johnl@ima.ima.isc.com (John R. Levine) (09/20/88)
In article <36300027@iuvax> bose@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu writes: > >There is a program advertized on the back of PCMag called: >"hands of the program". It is a software based system that prevents >unauthorized access to the hard disk. Does anyone have any experience with >this software? I haven't seen this particular one, but programs like this for DOS are rarely very useful. Some of them try to wrap code around various software interrupts to disallow access to files that you aren't supposed to be able to change. If you boot from your own floppy, though, you can wallop any file you want. Sometimes they don't even wrap the low-level interrupts so a program like Norton Utilities that uses the low level calls will bypass the protection. Perhaps it fiddles the organization of the disk, or somehow scrambles or encrypts data. In that case, as soon as the disk gets a little bit messed up you lose, since neither chkdsk nor any of the disk doctor programs know anything about the fiddled or scrambled format. A good rule of thumb is that if a user has physical access to the data, he has logical access. Generally, you have to depend on non-technical means to get any meaningful protection. You can always use technical schemes to make it hard to accidentally (or deliberately) tamper with data, but a determined user with physical access to the hardware can defeat such schemes. -- John R. Levine, IECC, PO Box 349, Cambridge MA 02238-0349, +1 617 492 3869 { bbn | think | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something Rome fell, Babylon fell, Scarsdale will have its turn. -G. B. Shaw
mvolo@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Michael R. Volow) (09/20/88)
Haven't used HandsOff, but have talked with them. They said that an unauthorized user could not boot from a floppy. Michael R. Volow 919 286 0411, page beeper #550 Dept. of Psychiatry mvolo@ecsvax.UUCP Durham Vet Admin Medical Center Durham, N.C. 27705
spectre@cisunx.UUCP (Robert Sillett) (09/22/88)
In article <5364@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> mvolo@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Michael R. Volow) writes: > > >Haven't used HandsOff, but have talked with them. They said that an >unauthorized user could not boot from a floppy. > A user can boot from a floppy, but can't access the hard disk. It can be broken by Norton Utilities and Norton Commander.