From: "A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security" <PADGETT@hobbes.orl.mmc.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 16:03:59 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Bootable disks
Message-ID: <960305215227.20204ca4@hobbes.orl.mmc.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> New hardware drives with replaceable media in the 100+ Mb
>range has developed. The Syquest 135 Mb drive, featured in the latest issue
>of _PC Mag_ can, with the parallel port version, reportedly boot. 
 
>This means one can have the drive that weighs about two pounds and a $20
>disk, place another OS on the disk, and have a very portable remailer
>system. 

Have made some small study of that area and would be somewhat surprised if
possible as advertised (BIOS would need some reason to look for disk on
parallel port).

What *might* be possible is to create a floppy that would install a device
driver that would install directly on top of the BIOS intercepts that
would transfer the boot to the Syquest but this would only work for 
an OS that did not replace the BIOS access with "something else" unless
you had a driver for *that*.

If you *really* wanted to go overboard, it would also be possible to create
a PROM that could be plugged into the "bootp" socket of a NIC and do the
same thing but the floppy route would be lots easier. A prom is how Iomega
used to be able to make Bernoullis the boot disk - went into a socket on
the PC2B (and earlier combo) card.

Incidently more than one "hard disk encryption system" using this method has 
been broken once I have grabbed the intercept out of a booted system. Is
also effective for recovering from CPTs.

					Warmly,
						Padgett