From: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 06:00:31 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: ADJ_ust
In-Reply-To: <199609301350.NAA10824@pipe2.ny1.usa.pipeline.com>
Message-ID: <v0300780fae77110d6ed9@[207.167.93.63]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 11:52 PM -0700 9/30/96, Dale Thorn wrote:

>If they wanna bombard the net, fine.  Just as long as they don't use one
>of those HAARP gizmos, like the ground-penetrating radar, and turn it
>onto a wide area, so everyone in, say, San Jose loses all their hard
>disk info and floppy backups.  I don't know much about non-magnetic
>technology, and so I wonder what the options are for secure backup,
>short of buying an expensive safe or a spot in an underground vault?

It's remarkably hard to erase modern magnetic media. (High coercivity means
field strengths have to be high, and magnetic heads are typically very
close to the media.)

No HERF, HAARP, or other Buck Rogers gizmo is going to even partially erase
floppy disks, let alone Winchester disks inside cases (their own cases,
plus the  outer enclosures). RF leakage is not at all the same thing as
kiloguass magnetic fields (and, more critically, the flux reversals per
unit length).

What the damage vectors might be, such as electrostatic discharge
("sparks"), or dielectric breakdown of oxides, or latchup, are covered in
various conferences, such as the Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects
Conference.

Personally, I think there's a lot of hype about this whole "infowar" thing.
Sure, security measures and vulnerabilities always need to be looked at,
but a lot of the rhetoric is being driven by journalists looking for lead
stories.

--Tim May



We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."