SAFE SURFING

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An easy way to stop the guys (from Redmond) to snoop data inside your harddisk
by -the_gonz
25 November 1998
(courtesy of fravia's pages of reverse engineering) ~ Slightly edited by fravia+
Hi +Fravia!

First of all some explanations why I feel having to contribute something 
to your site - which is hopefully worth it.
I crashed into your site about a year ago for the first time and what I 
saw and read was awesome! (And is still awesome today!).
Well, as far as it comes to reverse engineering. I´m not a programmer and 
I can´t "feel" any code (yet). But I still like your pages and especially 
your intentions for putting such a site on the web: FREE knowledge for 
real seekers. 
And NO banners, NO commercials! This is indeed something most rare to find.
You must be a noble man if you´re not impressed at all by the "dirty bucks".
And then, to top it all off... the Reality Cracking section. 
Good thing to know there are still some people out there with a working brain.

I really, really hope you´ll keep on with the work you´re doing!

-the_gonz


Essay:

An easy way to stop the guys (from Redmond) to 
snoop data inside your harddisk

As any reader of +Fravia´s site should know, our privacy on the net is
attacked by an army of dirty tricksters and most of all by Bill Gates 
and his slaves, especially if you´re using a lame browser like MSIE. 

Sure Opera is a big step towards safer surfing, but to me this seems 
not safe enough.
So what can we do? Well, the idea exposed here is an hardware attempt 
for more safety while you´re out on the web. 
This idea originates from a colleague of mine and has worked very well 
on a number of computers for months now.

You only have to install one small and simple switch in your machine,
which triggers between two harddisks, each one of them having a 
working OS installed. Get this well: NOT two harddisks, two harddisks with 
two copies of the same operating system!
You´ll use the "real" (and better) one for your daily work and pleasure. 
You might gather *any* data you like on that one, no one will ever know, 
unless they access phywically your machine. 
The second one is the 'smokescreen' one, doesn't need to be big at all (I 
use an old 500 meg HD) is just for your activities on the net, you´ll turn 
the other one off for that purpose. 

This 'smokescreen' harddisk contains only your preferred OS and a browser, 
and some freeware tools maybe as 'casting' actors. 
That means: even if you like to use MSIE (for whatever reason I cannot 
understand) you can now share the content of your HD with the whole net 
community because its contents will be perfectly legal -and even boring- 
for anyone who likes or manages to take a look.

See: there is now no data of interest on your harddisk, no names, no adresses, 
no unregistered applications, an empty desolate registry, no SoftIce, no 
Hexeditors, no Ida (you could be -My God- a cracker!), no detailed mm256.dat 
and mm2048.dat informations about your wabpaths (except  the URL´s, but who 
cares since you are really anonymous by now!). 

This must drive the spys and lackeys at Redmond crazy - they desperately try
to collect some interesting data from all the ´slaves´ using (and maybe not 
buying) their software and all they find is a deserted little harddisk, 
may be even too clean to be real, c'mon leave a single small gamez there... 
how annoying for the snoopers! "Hey Tom, come over here and have a look at 
this fish, seems quite interested in advanced information warfare tactics... 
wonder how the hell did he manage to find his way to our server..." "Nope man, 
look at his stupid dir, it's just another lamer/newbye cruising around the net 
without any clue..."

I don´t think I really have to explain how to build the switch into your
machine but I'll do it nevertheless to make this essay complete: you should 
connect both the 5V and the 12V power circuit to the switch. 
Possible connections are: 
a) either one of the harddisks is running by turning the switch
b) combinations of IDE devices are running, like 2 HD´s  (MA/SL) on IDE 1
   and one HD (MA) on IDE 2 (requires two switches) --> NOT THAT SAFE! 

You never know what kind of data an OS like Windoze is copying between 
the two or more HD´s on your machine... if they are running together. 
Use a ZIP drive or something for data exchange to keep things safe and 
clean.
One problem you may encounter is to have a running CD-ROM drive in such
a slightly manipulated system if you don´t want to slow down your first 
harddisk putting it together with the CD-ROM drive at one IDE connector 
(No CD-ROM while surfing, too). 
A simple but expensive solution is to install a SCSI CD-ROM drive. A
cheap but not much satisfying possibility is to dig out an old soundcard 
with CD-ROM interface on it.

Yes, you´re right, this is real cheap, it´s so easy...but works just
fine. Why shouldn't I bother about who is looking at my data - which is 
an absolutely private thing in my opinion - without my permission? 
Maybe this is not Anti-Microsoft enough for you, maybe you don´t
have time to boot up your computer anew every time you want to access
the web, maybe you don't care about safety, maybe you even like to 
destroy your nerves thinking about all the data snoopers out there - 
then by all means keep on trying to fix your buggy browser, full of 
concealed code (every new version adding more concealed code). 

To me that seems to be a waste of time. If everybody had a system like I
described above it would be totally useless even for a sick prick like 
Gates to create a piece of software which is trying to look inside your 
computer and carry the findings to some place you cannot even dream of.

If you think this is bullshit/great stuff, please let me know. I´ll be
ashamed/pleased immediately.
Yes, I didn´t grow up with the english language, so lemme be excused for
the many errors.

I liked the idea of that H.Cioff guy writing an essay for this very
site so I´m using a minus sign in front of my name, too, stating that 
I´m not (yet) a qualified +HCUker...

-the_gonz
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