randyrhoads1981
07-25-2002, 10:48 PM
Last One, interesting stuff:D
A Japanese start-up has come up with a mutant piece of hardware that it says may deliver "perfect security" for Web servers: a two-headed hard drive
Tokyo-based Scarabs has developed a prototype of the hard drive, which has a read-only head and a read-write head. The Web server can only read from the drive, theoretically making it impossible for attackers to deface the site or otherwise modify data.
For updating the site, an internal PC can be connected to the drive via the read-write head. "Each head works independently, so no synchronous control between two heads is needed," the company says on its Web site
Scarabs hopes to have a version of the device on the market this year.
The drive is an unusual response to the growing problem of online security, particularly with large businesses, whose Web servers are subject to a constant bombardment of attacks, according to security experts.
Scarabs says that its technology could help stem the problem, comparing the hard drive to one-way diodes in an electronic circuit. "The Internet should have one-way component-like diodes, and the two-heads hard disk drive can be (that) one-way component," the company said.
The idea has been suggested before, as a way of speeding data retrieval, since the write-only head would not have to wait for the read-write head to finish its tasks, but has never been made a practical reality. Naoto Takano, chief executive of Scarabs, has said that he first came up with the idea of applying the concept to security three or four years ago.
Scarabs built a prototype last year that runs with an NT server and has been using it to serve Webcam images since then. The drive currently costs more than $875 to manufacture, but Scarabs is working on a lower-cost implementation that would use a single head and two SCSI interfaces. Scarabs says it has approached several vendors and hopes to begin shipping the lower-cost drives this year
A Japanese start-up has come up with a mutant piece of hardware that it says may deliver "perfect security" for Web servers: a two-headed hard drive
Tokyo-based Scarabs has developed a prototype of the hard drive, which has a read-only head and a read-write head. The Web server can only read from the drive, theoretically making it impossible for attackers to deface the site or otherwise modify data.
For updating the site, an internal PC can be connected to the drive via the read-write head. "Each head works independently, so no synchronous control between two heads is needed," the company says on its Web site
Scarabs hopes to have a version of the device on the market this year.
The drive is an unusual response to the growing problem of online security, particularly with large businesses, whose Web servers are subject to a constant bombardment of attacks, according to security experts.
Scarabs says that its technology could help stem the problem, comparing the hard drive to one-way diodes in an electronic circuit. "The Internet should have one-way component-like diodes, and the two-heads hard disk drive can be (that) one-way component," the company said.
The idea has been suggested before, as a way of speeding data retrieval, since the write-only head would not have to wait for the read-write head to finish its tasks, but has never been made a practical reality. Naoto Takano, chief executive of Scarabs, has said that he first came up with the idea of applying the concept to security three or four years ago.
Scarabs built a prototype last year that runs with an NT server and has been using it to serve Webcam images since then. The drive currently costs more than $875 to manufacture, but Scarabs is working on a lower-cost implementation that would use a single head and two SCSI interfaces. Scarabs says it has approached several vendors and hopes to begin shipping the lower-cost drives this year