Hard Disk Will Have Hackers Seeing Double

"Hackers will be unable to attack Web sites protected by a new security system unless they can change the laws of physics, according to Naoto Takano, chief executive officer of Scarabs, a Japanese company. The company claims that it has developed a hard disk with two heads that prevents disk files published on the Web from being altered by hackers. Scarabs put two heads on the hard disk, a read-only head that is connected via one cable to a Web server for people to browse content on the disk file and a read/ write head that is connected by another cable to a PC for administrators who renew the data. Internet users have access to the disk file only through the read-only head and so there is no physical way they can go into the system and rewrite the data."

Rest of article here: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,102881,00.asp

 

Good idea! It will work well as long as the PC used to R/W the disk is not connected to the Internet. If it is, hackers will go after it. I like this idea. It's like having a physical disconnect while also connected simultaneously in real time. The cheaper version with the circuits might be hackable, but workable provided that the seperation is also physical--like having two CPU's in one box. This could be worked for individual security use as well. Definitely a money-maker! And, a vast improvement on our present systems.

 

Real nice idea it would seem! Also, I wouldn't have thought of it but after reading.. It's one of those.. "Why haven't they been doing this along?"

 

How to turn a very old idea into something which appears new...yawn. Over twenty years ago, IBM created RACF (resource access control facility) which allows you to set access priveleges (Read, Update, Control and Alter) by ID or Group.

I am singularly unimpressed by this "brilliant new" idea, which is no more than an inflexible hardware solution to something which was solved two decades earlier.