Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-sdd!craigb From: craigb@hp-sdd.hp.com (Craig Bosworth) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Preventing Floppy Boots Summary: Lattice SecretDisk did it. Message-ID: <2411@hp-sdd.hp.com> Date: 16 Aug 89 00:38:56 GMT References: <1989Aug15.183532.27998@ee.rochester.edu> Sender: news@hp-sdd.hp.com Reply-To: craigb@hp-sdd.hp.com (Craig Bosworth) Distribution: na Organization: Hewlett-Packard, San Diego Division Lines: 28 Lattice used to (still does?) make a package called SecretDisk that more or less did what you're talking about. What they did was write a block device driver for virtual disk drives. The virtual drives (SecretDisks) can only be acccessed after giving the driver the correct password. Once the SecretDisks are installed and accessed, they look like regular old DOS disks. The SecretDisks are represented in the system as large hidden files in which the data is encrypted. Running SecretDisk caused no performance or compatability problems on my Zenith 151. You can't make the entire hard disk inaccessable: boot code, DOS, and the SecretDisk driver have to be unencrypted, but you could protect everything else. Also, you could still boot the PC from a floppy, but without running the driver and entering the passwords, none of the SecretDisk data was useable (although it was destroyable: delete and overwrite the hidden encrypted data files). BOS -- Craig Bosworth (619) 592-8609 16399 West Bernardo Drive Hewlett-Packard, San Diego Division San Diego, CA 92127-1899 UUCP : {hplabs|nosc|hpfcla|ucsd}!hp-sdd!craigb Internet : craigb%hp-sdd@hp-sde.sde.hp.com (or @nosc.mil, @ucsd.edu)