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What's wrong with floppy disks? For certain kinds of highly sensitive information transport, a floppy disk is probably a better idea than a flash drive. I sup
by ObviousScience 12y ago
What's wrong with floppy disks?
For certain kinds of highly sensitive information transport, a floppy disk is probably a better idea than a flash drive.
I suppose you could use CDs, but floppy disks seem easier to destroy.
- pixl97 12y agoWhat's not wrong with them? Terrible write speed. Terrible read spead. Exceptionally low information density. High error rates. Short lifespan.
- walterbell 12y agoFor some communication channels, these are potential strengths. For the same reason why some rooms have small doors and some rooms have loading docks.
- Klinky 12y agoAn encrypted flash drive is probably better than security through inconvenience or unreliability.
- walterbell 12y agoError-correcting codes can help with reliability. Rate-limiting is appropriate for some use cases. Floppies don't have firmware to attack your PC: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191467-badusb-returns-hackers-publish-code-that-could-infect-millions-of-usb-devices http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191467-badusb-returns-hac...
- ObviousScience 12y agoFlash drives have two weaknesses: 1. The complexity of the USB protocol enables certain kinds of attacks that aren't possible through a floppy interface. 2. The circuitry present in a USB drive is capable of being partially replaced with other kinds of circuits in a hard-to-detect way, whereas, it's pretty easy to verify that a floppy disk contains no malicious circuits. These two vectors can be combined (along with other vulns) to do things like momentarily connect an unexpected modem to computers that are thought to be airgapped. (There are other, simpler, attacks such as having it exfiltrate data to a secret portion of the flash memory at the same time the drive is operating "as expected", by simply connecting itself as two devices.) This isn't a problem for most people, but it's entirely possible that there are materials at the White House which need to resist this level of sophisticated, can-create-our-own-silicon-with-hidden-radios level of attack. Remember, the NSA catalog was full of ordinary seeming devices that were meant to exfiltrate data or create radio links in to the computer.
- raverbashing 12y agoExcept for the complete crap reliability and tiny size Use secure technology, not crappy technology.
- gaius 12y agoSecure like... The Cloud? If Sony's payroll, upcoming scripts, etc had been stored on floppies, stored in a safe when not in use, they could have saved themselves a lot of embarrassment.
- raverbashing 12y agoHave you ever used a floppy or are you just trolling? Sure, storing it in a floppy would render it unreadable, even for them. Please go ahead and back up your data in floppies if you think it's that good
- gaius 12y agoUhh, I've been using floppies for 30 years. I used one today in my Atari ST. You?
- rdc12 12y agoWould any of that even fit on a floppy disk?
- gaius 12y agoWithout all the crap that modern formats adds, 1.4 million characters is a lot of text. Plenty even for even the most turgid of scripts.