Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by actionfromafar 852 days ago
I was prepared to disagree with you, but I now have the same interpretation you have. Durable medium can be email - but the example seems a little fuzzy, for instance a durable medium is definitely when the email is stored on a HDD on a customer device. But is it still durable medium if the email only exists in a webmail? Probably yes, but maybe no. So the conservative approach would be to send paper for some things. (Or in this case, stupidly, USB devices. Banks, don't do that, please.)

Ramble Edit: it's unfortunate IMHO that there is no "read only" medium anymore. Not sure what it would look like now when USB-C is taking over the world, and that ship probably sailed, but it would be really cool and useful to have the option of a "data only" USB.

Maybe computers could have one USB port marked as "ROM". Or a switch or LED symbol indicating "ROM safe" mode.

When using such a ROM port, anything USB inserted there would only look like a DVD reader. A USB drive would get its files "mirrored" into a virtual ISO filesystem. Any other devices, such as keyboards etc would be just ignored and not connected to at all.
2 comments
dfox 852 days ago
Most USB flash controllers support being read-only by either just being read-only or emulating optical drive. Obviously for the WORM usecase this is only an software solution inside the controller configuration as the underlying medium is still writable/erasable flash. In theory one could replace the flash with some kind of mask ROM with NAND-like interface and make it truly read only, but the cost makes that impractical for most applications.

Then there are LTO tapes that have WORM version, which is notionally not overwritable, but that is IIRC also only enforced by software (of the drive).

link
jimktrains2 852 days ago
That doesn't fix the issue though. The issue is a killer USB or a virus on the disk. Being able to only read an infected file still allows it to be read.

Also, this is only a software solution as the USB protocol would require bidirectional transmission.

link
actionfromafar 852 days ago
It doesn't fix the issue vs paper.

But it would bring us back to being as safe as a CD or diskette was.

I was thinking a special chip, talking bidirectionally both ways, pretending to be a PC host to the USB drive, and pretending to a DVD-ROM to the actual PC.

link