4 ms·

I'm guessing this product line is kept alive by outdated local government/municipality regulations or something along the lines of that. Oh, and owners of cars

by tpmx 4y ago

I'm guessing this product line is kept alive by outdated local government/municipality regulations or something along the lines of that. Oh, and owners of cars with CD players :). About now is probably the time to hoard.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
I needed my x-ray form the hospital, they gave me a CD. It actually kind of makes sence - they aren't gonna keep stacks of USB drives,.
- userbinator 4y ago
  The fact that it's WORM media also makes sense for medical images, where you really don't want them to be editable.
  - cancerhacker 4y ago
    My hospital distributed all my CT, PET and MRI imagery on DVD. When I had to travel cross country to a specialist, I'd ripped them all and brought a thumb drive - which the new hospital refused to deal with. I had to stay up all night burning a set of DVDs for them from the the iso images. (And even though I had them all available via dropbox - the hospital didn't allow access to the internet at large.)
    - Uvix 4y ago
      Sounds like the hospital had their infosec well in hand. That's rare.
      - megous 4y ago
        Add in autoplay.inf to the burned CD, and we'll see...
    - NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
      While both types of removable media represent a risk of malware, a USB device represents a very real electronic threat of damage to equipment. You can easily inspect a CD-ROM or DVD disc and confirm that it is what it claims to be. You cannot inspect most USB thumb drives without destroying them, and they could be disguised keyboards, keyloggers, wireless exfiltration, or device destruction devices. I am really sort of annoyed by the step backwards we've taken from tapes and optical discs into "this really smart device that happens to store data wants to interface with as many computers as possible". It's icky for those who instinctively understand and practice good infosec hygiene.
      - userbinator 4y ago
        I think the "step backwards" is largely due to the rise of flash memory, which requires an electrical interface. That said, electrical destruction aside, the threat of removable media "becoming something else" is avoided if you use dedicated storage interfaces instead of USB, like SD/TF/MMC/etc.

by tpmx 4y ago

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

I needed my x-ray form the hospital, they gave me a CD. It actually kind of makes sence - they aren't gonna keep stacks of USB drives,.

userbinator 4y ago
The fact that it's WORM media also makes sense for medical images, where you really don't want them to be editable.
- cancerhacker 4y ago
  My hospital distributed all my CT, PET and MRI imagery on DVD. When I had to travel cross country to a specialist, I'd ripped them all and brought a thumb drive - which the new hospital refused to deal with. I had to stay up all night burning a set of DVDs for them from the the iso images. (And even though I had them all available via dropbox - the hospital didn't allow access to the internet at large.)
  - Uvix 4y ago
    Sounds like the hospital had their infosec well in hand. That's rare.
    - megous 4y ago
      Add in autoplay.inf to the burned CD, and we'll see...
  - NoZebra120vClip 4y ago
    While both types of removable media represent a risk of malware, a USB device represents a very real electronic threat of damage to equipment. You can easily inspect a CD-ROM or DVD disc and confirm that it is what it claims to be. You cannot inspect most USB thumb drives without destroying them, and they could be disguised keyboards, keyloggers, wireless exfiltration, or device destruction devices. I am really sort of annoyed by the step backwards we've taken from tapes and optical discs into "this really smart device that happens to store data wants to interface with as many computers as possible". It's icky for those who instinctively understand and practice good infosec hygiene.
    - userbinator 4y ago
      I think the "step backwards" is largely due to the rise of flash memory, which requires an electrical interface. That said, electrical destruction aside, the threat of removable media "becoming something else" is avoided if you use dedicated storage interfaces instead of USB, like SD/TF/MMC/etc.