Stash Your Hard Drive In The Attic 512
RegardsSJ writes "Robert X. Cringley on his PBS website mentions a $479 wireless, fanless 120gb network storage/file server appliance (running linux) in his column. He thinks the killer app for this one is for keeping your porn storage hidden, if you're busted by the cops. I think his concept is weak, given the wireless signal is traceable (security through obscurity?), WEP is breakable, and the fact that you have to have the thing plugged in somewhere... The company selling the device is martian.com. Anybody use one?" Now that it's possible to stream audio and video through various boxes originally serving other purposes (like TiVo and PlayStation2), this looks like a good companion piece, too.
In the closet... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In the closet... (Score:5, Funny)
Which makes me wonder about the priorities of Slashdot's editors.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
the article never actually says pr0n or pron... (Score:5, Informative)
Who knows what the people at PBS have to hide from the cops.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Since it was done using your 12 year old sister as a 'model'?
Anybody worried about police busting his porn site would have to be stashing some seriously hardcore stuff... and they'd also have to be pretty stupid to have a wireless node broadcasting it to the neighborhood -- even if it is 'encrypted'.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
That was my reaction. Unless you're in one of the several countries governed by semi-theocratic laws where pr0n of any sort is illegal, and showing a little ankle is considered risque.
However, you may have other things to hide. Your real accounting books, so you can keep the IRS at bay while keeping more of your income. Your "cracker tools" and the fruits of your cracking efforts. Your copies of all those public documents formerly available on CD-ROM which the U.S. government ordered destroyed shortly after Sept. 11th in the name of national security. Your list of contacts and informants as a reporter. Your MP3 and OGG files, so that if the RIAA comes knocking...
As you can see, some things you could use a secret storage device for are pretty bad, while some are completely good. Everyone should be entitled to a measure of privacy, and the ability to protect it. In fact, it used to be a matter of law in prior centuries that a man's personal papers, books, diaries and such, could not be used against him as evidence--because we're supposed to have freedom of thought. Sadly, this has eroded...
This device has many waknesses which the submitter points out. However, one could very easily build a similar device without those deficiencies in security. For one thing, wireless is out--too traceable, sniffable, and breakable. So, you'd have to go wired--and disguise the wired connection as something innocuous and unconnected to a "secret network". Hmmm... The many possibilities include phoneline networking, as long as you're willing to do a little remodeling and don't mind the slow speed. If you really think about it, there are many ways in which one could adequately disguise a wired network, as long as you're willing to do a little remodeling or build custom, disguised dual-use devices. Hell, as Cringely mentioned, even TiVos have USB ports these days... The possibilities are literally endless.
illegal porn?? (Score:5, Insightful)
If only it came with a self-destruct mechanism, it might overcome the shortcomings you mentioned
Re:illegal porn?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:illegal porn?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure they can. Remember: in the end, you'd be judged by a jury, and to a jury a computer is a "magic box" anyway.
And, theoretically, the US and Mexican police could just cooperate.
Re:illegal porn?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:illegal porn?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:illegal porn?? (Score:2)
Re:illegal porn?? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:illegal porn?? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:illegal porn?? (Score:2)
Re:illegal porn?? (Score:3, Interesting)
I belive military hardware has self destruct, or we destroy it. Like spy planes computer stuff that is. I belive they smash the drives and toss acid on them.
Now this would be a neet feature in a harddrive. Have a mod you can trigger that causes the pickup head to grind the plater in pre chosen spots to be destroyed or just have a capsule of acid in the drive and when needed you can trigger it and she kill
Re:illegal porn?? (Score:3, Informative)
No, microwaving recordable-CDs is commonplace amongst anyone who needs to securely delete a CDR. [4 seconds, put a glass of water in the microwave too, and make sure all your windows are open]
Anyone with more money (i.e. corporate, government, military) pays for someone to come and take their CDs and grind them up using special cutting machines.
Admittedly, the military do
Why (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why (Score:2)
Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen cases where a girl was raped and the defense brought forth the fact that the woman was a stripper, as evidence that she lead a dangerous lifestyle and 'put herself in a situation to be raped.' Not saying I agree or disagree with that, but things like that do happen. Or let's say you're a Chemistry major who somehow ends up held on secret evidence; part of that evidence is that you kept materials relating to chemicals on your hard drive. You had no malicious intent, but . . . that doesn't much matter.
So, there's a lot of reasons to hide things, especially when the idea of privacy is pretty much gone nowadays. I'd say people who make a comment like "why would you hide anything if you're not guilty" probably haven't had any run ins with the law (either through friends or directly), and don't know that prosecutors and detectives could oftentimes give a rat's ass about facts, especially if you end up being their "first big case," and finding you guilty means a promotion and big media coverage.
Cops??? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cops??? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cops??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cops??? (Score:5, Funny)
Pre-emptive strike (Score:3, Funny)
Now the cops can threaten me with revealing my secret porn empire and I'll just yawn and say "old news, and nobody cares."
oh yes.... (Score:3, Funny)
Hiding data from the police (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hiding data from the police (Score:5, Interesting)
Friend of mine lived in an apartment that caught fire. He had a couple of PC's at the time, including a high-end (at the time) 1Ghz Athlon. He and his roommate were able to get most of the valuables out of the place, including the Athlon PC, but most of their possessions were lost. The fire investigator came across the roommate's shotgun (they were hunters) that had a shorter than normal, but legal, barrel. The police were called in, all weapons were confiscated, and amazingly so were the computers. Even if the shotgun were illegal, I still can't figure out what relationship a computer would have to it. Chalk it up to post-Columbine paranoia I suppose, although these guys were in their early 20's. No charges were ever filed, but the computers were never returned despite several iniquiries. The kids were pretty scared after the whole ordeal and never really pursued the matter.
Re:Hiding data from the police (Score:5, Informative)
This is why you leave a copy of your backups with your attorney.
A company I worked for sent one of the weekly offsite sets to our corprate law firm so we would have access in case of legal entanglements.
Re:oh yes.... (Score:4, Funny)
mmm.. donuts
Why spend on this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why spend on this (Score:2)
You guessed it (Score:5, Funny)
Cringely is a pervert then (Score:4, Funny)
This would be cool. You can stick your file storage box under the couch.
My goal of filling every possible nook & cranny with computers can now be achieved!
Bathroom file server, here we come..
RegardsSJ is a pervert then (Score:2)
With one of these things, you wouldn't need any hard drives in your computers! One fileserver for the whole family! Yay! The computers would have to boot off of a flashcard or CDROMs though...
I wonder how fast the processor is on one of these things. If they could be hacked to run X programs, you wouldn't even need computers, just thin clients running X terminals.
From the Martian site:
Hmmm....it seems Tesla
Re:RegardsSJ is a pervert then (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to mention the neighbors.... :-)
Only in America... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Only in America... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Only in America... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Only in America... (Score:2)
I'll wager that many of us are glad you're Canadian.
A more serious use than hiding pr0n. (Score:5, Insightful)
would be to store the heat-producing noisy things in a different room than the humans.
(Perhaps this is mentioned in the article. I can't tell because their webserver is on fire.)
Both at home and at work, I'm tired of noisy machines. I work to minimize the noise. I'd love to just say, "fuck it, be as noisy as you want," as I lovingly place all the equipment on the other side of a wall, leaving nothing but a monitor and the input devices in front of me.
Re:A more serious use than hiding pr0n. (Score:4, Interesting)
Good neighbors (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good neighbors (Score:3, Funny)
uh, how about drive encryption? (Score:5, Informative)
Just don't put its password in your keychain, or those feds will get a chuckle as they double-click the image file and it unlocks with your autologin.
Re:uh, how about drive encryption? (Score:5, Informative)
A better way to stash porn: (Score:3, Funny)
Hrmm... (Score:2)
Bad recommendation (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because it's fanless doesn't mean it generates no heat. In fact, free airflow is probably more important than with forced-air cooling. I've seen plenty of complaints about how hot that fanless Apple cube box could get.
Covering the box with insulation and putting it in a 140 degree F attic sounds like a sure-fire way to fry the system. I would be surprised if it's not a fire hazard as well.
Re:Bad recommendation (Score:3, Interesting)
And it doesn't have to cook in your attic.
presuming you have access.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Granted you would probably want to use the most recent and strongest varient of WEP, and if possible waveguide your area between the AP and the server to reduce attacks, but if you build it properly, they can set up everything they take from your house, and won't have a bootable system, and you can go to a swap meet or computer recycler and pick up enough hw to go back and wipe your server before they start tearing apart the finish of the house.
That's if you are paranoid.
-Rusty
The Attic? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Attic? (Score:2)
What's on your mind? (Score:2, Informative)
The author doesn't mention porn in his article... get your minds out of the gutter
bad summary (Score:2, Redundant)
If you have the kind of porn that has to be hidden from police, you belong in jail. But I wouldnt' want anyone to find the plans to the death star...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:bad summary (Score:3, Insightful)
The law is neither just nor moral when it comes to a persons sexual lifestyles.. Its used as a tool to keep the status quo.
Wake up people, when sodomy laws reach the us supreme court because state courts call certain life styles "Illegal", there is a massive witch-hunt and you need to protect yourself.
This is just ano
Burglers (Score:2, Insightful)
Rendezvous (Score:2)
Martian Drive + GeoCache = Data Dumps (Score:3, Interesting)
The idea is to create a decentralized, accessible, but non-connected freenet centered around a sort of "dead-drop" concept. If you want to distribute something, drive around town uploading to these file repositories, and hopefully leechers that frequent these spots will pass the data on.
Of course, if you wanted to network these units, all you have to do is plop one somewhere, then train a box with a wired connection at them and set up a bridge - so you can use them either way. I like the cloak-and-dagger method myself... it seems cooler 8)
Re:Martian Drive + GeoCache = Data Dumps (Score:2)
Re:Martian Drive + GeoCache = Data Dumps (Score:2)
I'm sure some enterprising blackhat will try creating a "reverse honeypot" by putting one of these boxes right up to some big corporation, and con
am I stupid or will it be detected? (Score:3, Insightful)
He doesn't mention porn. (Score:2)
But, Cringely talks about hiding data . And, yes, current consumer wireless tech is a poor fit to the task of
securing data, but that will change.
Personally, I just like the plug-and-play, out-of-sight storage idea. You could, very seriously, drop this in any closet with electrical outlets and serve up media/storage to a
If the cops are looking, it's too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, you might have your super-leet miniserver stuck in your heating ducts, powered by a little mini-windmill and linked via 802.11g to your house, with an emergency "shut up for 24 hours" command, and that might keep it from being found in a cursory search. But if the cops really think you have something on a computer in your house that is worth finding, they will find it. They will keep searching until they do, even if it takes days.
So the day after you are hauled downtown, one of the forensics team says "Hey, there's a signal here on 5GHz - get the spec-an in here and let's DF that puppy."
Now, if you used strong encryption, you might keep them from knowing what is on the disk, but find it they will. And they can compel you to provide the key - even here in the US, all they have to do is say "Fine - we won't charge you based on anything we find." That "poofing" sound was your 5th Amendment right becoming irrelevant - you can no longer incriminate yourself, so you can no longer refuse to testify and be protected. Continue to refuse, and they find you in contempt of court and lock you up until you change your mind.
Robert Heinlein made the point in "If This Goes On..." that the best thing in the world is to let them find something bad, but not bad enough to get you into trouble. So, if you are plotting the overthrow of the known world, you keep that info a deep, dark secret tattooed on the inside of your eyelids encrypted with a 4096 bit key, but you keep your goat porn on a drive they will find (with a little looking). Then, when they think you are hiding something and find the drive, they look a little longer, don't find anything, and move on.
But once again, the big trick is not to arouse suspicions in the first place. If they knock on the door, you've already lost.
Re:If the cops are looking, it's too late (Score:2)
I suggest you lay off the big brother theories and do a little law research.
Drug dealer's trick (Score:2)
An electronic device that needs power is trickier, but a wireless device mitigates some of that since you don't even have to touch it to use it. The right kind of device could run for a long time without external power (batteries, solar) or the right hiding place could p
Re:If the cops are looking, it's too late (Score:3, Insightful)
The DA wants to decrypt your drive. He cannot.
He hits you with a supeona for the key. You have two choices - supply or refuse.
You refuse, citing your 5th amendment rights.
The DA offers you immunity.
You continue to refuse.
Since you have been offered immunity, you no longer have the protection of the 5th amendment, as you cannot incriminate yourself.
Therefor, you are in violation of the supeona - a court document.
You are, therefor, in contempt of court.
You are missing the po
Ugly again! (Score:2)
Are there any small server appliances out there which generate little heat (as this one) but looks a little better than a circa 80s VCR?
Roll your own.. (Score:5, Informative)
They cost a lot less to buy what this company wants to charge you. Sure they added wireless card/hard drive/memory but $500 still seems a bit expensive.
Check out http://www.mini-itx.com for details of the motherboard / case. They also have an online store for Europeans...
BTW, you can easily get 2 hard drives in that case if you take out the included hd enclosure so you could make one with a lot more space than 120gb...
Re:Roll your own.. (Score:3, Informative)
thats only $275. not to mention how much easier it would be to modify this unit to your needs.
Re:Roll your own.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd rather pay the money for a TiVo that works out of the box, than spend time building a box that does the same thing.
I'd rather spend $500 on this box than spend $400 and several hours of my free time building and configuring a homebrew version.
Ironically, I guess, the time I would have been prepared to put in the effort woul
I think... (Score:2)
backward. (Score:2)
The only long wire you need is ethernet. As many have noticed, you can put all the noisy things in a room by themselves. All you need for a terminal is an old P90 laptop. X forward via ssh and never worry about noise again. Long wires for keyboards and VGA and all only useful if you are running an OS that has poor networ
Drug dealers, hide your drugs in the attic. (Score:4, Funny)
After all, the cops, even though they have a warrant and some sort of indication that you have illegal material, will probably just give up without looking in the attic. I mean, who would think someone might hide stuff up there? I learned this trick from the "porn computer in the attic article."
Security through obscurity works... (Score:2)
RTA! he doesn't suggest you hide porn on it (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe that's the only sort of data that
Security? (Score:2)
My plan: (Score:5, Interesting)
If anyone's interested, thermite is actually very easy to make. Igniting it from the computer would probably require a multi-stage ignition, though - say, electric match to black powder to magnesium strip to thermite. And you'd want to make sure the ignition signal didn't get accidentally flipped on reboot or core dump or anything. =]
Encryption's all well and good, but you've got to keep the keys somewhere. Just try recovering data from a hard drive when you can't identify which lump of metal IS the hard drive.
Let's clear up some things: (Score:5, Informative)
For those you who think it burns and/or requires oxygen, your wrong. This is the equation for a thermite reaction:
Fe2O3(s) + 2AL(s) -> AL2O3 + 2Fe + energy
That's right. Powdered aluminum and powdered rust make thermite. It's ignition temperature is so high that it is normally lit with burning magnesium metal. It reacts so hot that a small amount (like a kilo) can melt a hole through the engine block of a car and keep going through the concrete. That'll definitely be suffucient to melt your porno.
Re:My plan: (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it also very legal to make and detonate? I don't know about your jurisdiction, but in my law class I remember something against detonating explosives without a permit.
Thermite is not an explosive. It just makes an incredibly hot pool of molten metal.
Thermite = Powdered aluminum + rust (aka iron oxide). That's all there is to it.
Once you ignite it the oxygen moves from the iron to the aluminum. You get aluminum oxide, pure iron, and lots and lots of heat.
-
Not privacy, simple thieves? (Score:4, Insightful)
extreme, by mentioning police, feds etc.
I think a more normal, and more common cause would be simple protection for thieves:
- They have to work quickly in general.
- They are relatively low tech
- They are after the hardware, not the data. (why search the house for a $400 appliance for which they probably don't even get $100
So simple separating the visible part to of your
computers from the storage/data as far as thieves are concerned.
Target: normal, ordinary people with important records: dentist, doctors, some journalists, politicians (including local, often worth a lot of money to real-estate entrepeneurs) etc.
In your attic? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't see something with no fans surviving long in the attic. Now in the winter, heck yeah, but in the summer?
Colocation boys & girls... (Score:5, Informative)
Just be sure to write a script into your .bash_logout that wipes your .bash_history & all relevant log files...
Not that I've done this or anything...
Wonder if I should have posted this anonymously...
it's not that far off to use it for hiding.. (Score:3, Interesting)
because most of the time the cops won't bother snooping around totally, and in other countries than usa they might not have the right to stay at the computer and look whats going on once they bust you (basically, they can't alter the data, so they can't keep it on, or don't even have anyone available who would be able to figure it out). and i would bet that still most of the busts(the actual seizing of the machines) are held by not very geeky officers. and such hw is easy to place at your neighbours house or where ever, just make sure you got lots of other suspicious computers to seize. why would one want this privacy is his own thing(for one, it's not certain you will get your hw back as it is, even if you are innocent)..
not that hiding cd's was that difficult either, but that would involve too much running around the house.
though, using home-pna could prove out to be more convinient/cheaper and wouldnt involve wireless sniffing possibility, and you could place that out of sight pretty easily too.
i would put the machine inside a cast-beton case that had it's own ups inside that(that when disconnected would start to wipe the hd), and that would explode the innards if opened or wrong button pressed(while at it have the hd's spinning open without top covers and have some good goo/acid flow on them..), and while at it have it built into houses base too.
Erm.. Speed? (Score:3, Informative)
Now a 120GB hard drive over a wireless link? Possibly enough to stream DivX, forget about DVD, and to fill the drive would take over two days!
Now we Know What the "X" Stands For. (Score:4, Interesting)
"As a result, whenever a server fails at Google, THEY DO NOTHING. They don't replace the broken machine. They don't remove the broken machine. They don't even turn it off. In an army of drones, it isn't worth the cost of labor to locate and replace the bad machines. Hundreds, maybe thousands of machines lie dead, uncounted among the 10,000 plus."
Is this common knowledge? Great concept. In the long run I'd think they would be better off running blade computers to save power and reduce heat etc.
Tieing back to the subject... Network Attached Storage is the way of the future. Ultimately I'd rather have everything online somewhere where is it getting backed up properly. If I have to keep the data in my house at all I'd certainly rather it be on a specialized device that does one thing and does it well rather than on a Windows machine where it is at the mercy of the latest service pack.
Is this supposed to be clever? (Score:3, Interesting)
I experimenting with various uses. It was a poor DVR DVR, due to the limited CPU and the small HDDs back then; it was an okay MP3 server but sometimes hiccuped if playing songs locally while streaming to other machines; NT-150 hackers still use the smart card slot for satellite card hacking, but that wasn't my gig.
It eventually became the least powerful CPU in my junkbox, but I liked its small, silent form factor and hated to trash its other capabilities. With a few components, I added an IR data reciever. the transfer rate never reached 10Mbps, but it was faster than the wireless networks of the time.
In the 70's, when lasers diodes ran $10+ surplus, hobbyists routinely used IR LEDs to communicate 100s of meters. A cluster of today's high-powered IR LEDs might reach a km or more (the transmitter needn't be directional if it's bright (illuminate a 6" translucent plastic cap and make the reciever directional with a cheap lens+tube focused on the emitter. Imagine, for example, a detector with a 1" dia "directional" tube fixed high in a tree on a distant hill, connected by RF or camouflaged wire to a buried server.
To be really clever, plant a second set-top box, filled with legal but embarrassing material in your backyard. When the cops "persuade" you to surrender the device, they won't suspect the existence of the real one.
As a matter of fact, I never got around to getting it back from the distant tree I used for range testing. If the battery weren't long since dead, I might give it a spin. Sure, rain, fog, and foliage would be problems over time, but depending on your location, you might be able to find a suitable location (e.g. the roof of a distant building). Power is also a problem, but the NT-150's current 10W draw could easily be handled by a small solar cell charging a battery (it'd charge 8-16 hours a day, but would probably only be used a few minutes a day) and even building technicians are hesitant to mess with unknown devices.
(The Stazi kept a covert surveillance station in Prague's old clock tower, but never gave a second thought to a wiring box along the power lines they ran up the tower stairway. It recently was found to contain a radio relay believed to be have been used by the KGB to relay small local KGB bugs to a Soviet office downtown. The KGB stole Stazi power because the tower -perfect for a relay- wasn't otherwise electrified, and they did not want to inform the Stazi about their local bugs)
This was, and is, beginner-level hardware hacking. It costs more in ingenuity than cash.
My solution to an ongoing problem. (Score:3, Interesting)
PORN.
This is what I did to combat the police problem. I bought several industrial demagnetizers and installed hard drives on the demagnetization surface. The demagnetizers are all attached to a solenoid. Pushing a single switch, which is hidden in a convenient place, immediately and irretrievably destroys all information on the hard drives. (That's because the demagnetizer stays on for the entire time the police are searching the place.) By the way, the information stored on these hard drives is as follows:
- Photographs proving that the women in my family have walked in public without being covered by a tablecloth. (We live in Afghanistan.)
- Videos proving that we have taught children how to read and write.
- MP3s, purchased from the Internet per the intellectual rights requirements of the content provider. (Music is illegal here.)
- Documents that criticize the actions of our local politicians.
No other information is stored on any of our hard drives.I already have one (Score:3, Funny)
Now if only I could find it. I know it's somewhere under all these clothes, papers, and other things.
Seriously though, I've lost my laptop under items before. It's a cooler running laptop, so it's not really a problem.
Re:Wireless Radiation (Score:5, Insightful)
Mobiles are limited to ?1 watt?. A torch bulb is several watts, at higher (and conventionally more damaging) . I just don't see any mechanism for damage; and nobody (AFAIK) has followed up any suggestions with valid research.
Sunlight is about 500w/m^2. The top of my head is about about 20 cm round of this, so a sunny day gives 10-20W onto my skull. A mobile at a total of 1W, not all of which is radiated towards me? I am not worrying.
And, to keep on topic, I think WiFi is even less (?1/4 watt?) and you don't hold it close to you.
I would worry far more about exhaust fumes, myself. But those seem less dangerous to ordinary people, because you can "see" them, whereas you can't see this nasty electromagnetic radiation (big bad word there).
Re:Wireless Radiation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wireless Radiation (Score:3, Interesting)
But much of it comes from annecdotal evidence of people who have brain tumors shaped like their cell phone antenna, and there aren't very many annecdotes at that.
I'm not a molecular biologist or anything, but I would guess the low frequency radiation which can penetrate a little way into the body isn't damaging because it ionizes anything, but because it might trick
Re:Wireless Radiation (Score:3, Informative)
Knowing a lot of healthy physicists that have been exposed to many times the power of a cell phone (like my boss that works with equipment that pulse around 10 kA and 5 kV), it would seem that small sources like that would not be much a threat.
Also, I have seen various results for the number of cell phone users that have cancer, and many of them indicate that they are less likely to get cancer than the population in general. I don't have the papers with me now, but I am sure someone less lazy than me can
Re:Wireless Radiation (Score:2)
Re:Already have one, cost less too (Score:2)
Wow. Slashdot has monks now.
Re:No, but I built one. (Score:2, Insightful)
Just think.. then instead of having to try and mount the hardrive on a different computer when it breaks.. I can just
Re:Setup a Samba box (Score:2)
No, buy a Celeron and build your own AppleTalk box.
(Assumptions, assumptions...)