Number 277 - June 2006

Paranoid Computing Revisited
by Robert Hawes (r_d_hawes@hotmail.com) Amateur Computer Group of New Jersey April 2006 ACGNJ News
Just about a year ago. I made a discovery--a way to surf the Net without ever having to worry about viruses, trojans, spyware, or anything else. First, I removed all the hard drives from my computer. Then, I used the SimplyMEPIS 3.3 Live CD to boot Linux from my DVD-ROM drive, and accessed the Web through my DSL router. Later, I successfully downloaded files to a single empty hard drive that I put back in. (For complete details, see "Paranoid Computing: An Introduction" in last May's issue)(of 2005 ACGNJ News - ed). The lesson I learned was that a properly designed operating system can be completely read-only. (Of course, that bloated monstrosity Windows XP need not apply).    Recently, I read (in Jerry Pournelle's column in the February 2006 issue ofDr. Dobb's Journal) about a new product called the "U3 Smart Drive". I went to their Web Site (www.u3.com) to get further details, but they said there pretty much the same thing as Jerry said in his article: You load your data, and the programs it takes to use that data (supposedly your usual software, not stuff you have to get from them) onto one of their thumb drives. Then, you plug that drive into another computer's USB port and those programs instantly run there, with no installation. Unplug the drive and all your stuff vanishes from that computer, leaving no trace behind. Just like in the good old DOS days--no complex installers or removers required. So much for the registry. Now, this particular product works on Windows XP and 2000 computers only. They've got a MAC version in the works, but seemingly have no plans for Linux or UNIX. It really doesn't matter. The hard part has always been separating what can be done from what can't be done. They did that (and apparently it took a lot of hard work indeed). If this impressive and useful technology can work with XP, it'll work with anything. If they don't do a Linux version soon, somebody else will. Look at the laser. It took a lot of time and expense to get the first one to work, but these days, you can make a laser out of just about anything.	Considering all the writing-to-disk that Windows does as it runs, it's entirely possible that the U3 software does some writing to the host computer's hard drive as well, but it doesn't have to. Since the U3 software only becomes resident after the computer has been turned on, and (in a proper shut-down) has already been removed before the computer is turned off, no non-volatile storage is required. If it's not designed to reside completely in memory now, it will be one day. This technology means that any program, no matter how complex, can work with a read-only operating system. Not only that, but it strongly suggests that all programs can be made read-only as well (except maybe for one small INI type file each). So all we really need hard drives for is data. And our data files are getting huge.    I've said this before; given the choice, I'd never store any data files in the same partition as the operating system. There a lot of things I dislike about Microsoft, but I think one of the worst ideas they ever had was putting that "My Documents" directory on the C: drive. In the Microsoft model, program and data files are hopelessly intermixed. Have you seen where Outlook Express stores E-mail files? Six directory levels deep under C:\Windows. They make it impossible to back up the data and operating system separately, as would be the sensible thing to do.    Last May, I imagined a "firmdrive". Externally, it was the same size and had the same connections as an IDE hard disk, so it wouldn't require any change in computer hardware design. Internally, it had no moving parts. Just chips. Once it was set up, it could be made read-only. Maybe with a hardware switch, so that no hacker, no matter how ingenious, could ever create a virus that can write to it unless you switched it back first. As for our increasingly large data files, they could be stored on our increasingly large hard drives. Or stick memory.    The U 3 software brings us a giant step closer to that ideal.
Number 277 - June 2006