From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 1996 14:05:56 +0800
To: wb8foz@nrk.com
Subject: Re: Moscowchannel.com hack
Message-ID: <199609020357.UAA18140@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 01:23 PM 9/1/96 -0400, David Lesher wrote:
>> > Write your web site to a CD-ROM and hard-code the base directory into the
>> > webserver.
>> A hacker who has root can forcibly unmount the cdrom and mount another
>> directory on that node. Not a good solution.

>Real hard disks such as RL02's & RK07's have WRITE DISABLE
>switches....

Many modern SCSI drives have them also, though you may need
to connect a switch to the appropriate jumpers.  In Hugh Daniel's
copious spare time, he's been working on hacking *bsd Unix
to cope with a write-protected root drive (you mainly need to set up
the swap partition and anything that needs writing in on a separate
drive and build lots and lots of symlinks for random logfiles.)

RM05s also let you connect them to two computers, though it was
a really bad idea to tell both computers to mount them as writeable,
since they'd scribble over the superblocks.  (This was more useful
before Ethernets became widely supported, since you could blaze away
at full MASSBUS and/or disk speed instead of 19.2kbps UUCP.)
You can play the same games with SCSI today, if you're careful.

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> 	Reassign Authority!