27 Jan
2006
27 Jan
'06
8:17 a.m.
I read a brilliant article on the encryption boards
used in banking. The
actual clever bits are encased in epoxy, and powered by batteries on the
board. If you remove the batteries, it loses the contents of memory (and
all keys). If you attempt to cut the package open, you cut through a
layer consisting of many turns of resistance wire. If yout cut it, or
bypass bits, the resistance changes and it clobbers the memory.
I just had a similar experience with a Compaq RAID array. The drives
were encoded soas to only work with the controller, attempting to read
them with another controller and/or removing that controiller from the
system disrupted the configuration so that the disks contents were
effectively rendered unreadable, even on reassembly. Six big cache
batteries on the controller showed that the state of the array was keyed
in to and bound in with it and 'cutting apart' the components broke the
security.
Securing data on disks is still a big problem today.
Not the case it seemed with this system.
John A.