From: jfricker@vertexgroup.com (John F. Fricker)
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 12:37:30 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: What remains to be done.
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960709010452.00c71718@vertexgroup.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 05:09 PM 7/8/96 +0000, you wrote:
>On  8 Jul 96 at 14:12, Ray Arachelian wrote:
>[..]
>> I'm constantly switching between NT and 95 and have them installed on the 
>> same drive.  Would be cool to have some low level driver to encryption 
>> from the Master Boot Record for example to get around unfriendly OS's- but 
>> then NT won't respect the BIOS calls, 95 in 32 bit mode won't, Linux sure 
>> as hell wont, etc.... that was the whole idea of having a BIOS in the 
>> first place, but woe is us.
>
>BIOS was written for real mode... part of the problem. Another is the 
>not-made-here syndrome, and in a sense Linux, OS/2, NT and 95 are 
>different types of operating systems, so a shared BIOS is unfeasible.
>
>It would be nice to develop an encrypted filesystem that could be 
>ported across operating systems for those of us with multiple OS's.
>
>BTW, Linux 2.0 is making a nice step in that direction by adding 
>support for mounting a file (which contains a filesystem), 
>specifically to allow encrypted file systems as well as things like 
>testing out iso9660-fs before buring CD-ROMs, etc.  In theory 
>something similar can be done with Win95/NT and OS/2, but it hasn't 
>been done the proper way (SecureDevice is really a hack in that 
>sense). 
>

One of these days Microsoft will officially release NT's IFS SDK. A few
"preliminary" and incomplete copies of a 1993 beta release do float around
but for a mere $50K there's a company that will sell you the complete source
for an IFS. It's a crime that Microsoft hasn't shipped this SDK yet as the
Installable File System is one of the great powers of NT.

So, if someone is interested in coughing up the $50K I know a couple NT
programmers just chomping at the bit to build cool IFS's like PGPDrive, etc.

--j