Intrusion Detection For Your PC Case

Anonymous Coward writes "Ryan du Bois, from genbukan security (aka red0x), has created a chassis intrusion detection system for your computer box: the actual physical case. He also wrote a paper describing three separate implementations of this CIDS system: Contacts, Pressure switchs, and a PLA (programmable microchip). Included in his paper are complete designs for the first two and a promise for the last to come soon. Definitely worth a read. The paper is available in many formats including OpenOffice 1.0, HTML , TEXT and a Tarball of them all. You can also obtain the signatures as well as his Automated Security Tools Project, of which this is a member."

This is news?

[No-op]

Pretty much all standard business desktops have intrusion detection devices, as well as bios hooks to inform higher level software apps that it has been tripped. Most server cases have this as well- a whole slew of my compaq racks here have them, and they tie into our management system. Mind you, they lock as well, so I'm not as worried- they have solenoids! *THUNK*

I can't imagine someone cobbling together something that has existed forever is news...

What a bunch of Rubes!... Goldberg, that is

[L. VeGas]

All you need is tamper-evident tape [tamper.com].

Moderation

[twoflower]

I have moderation points, but it won't let me moderate the story itself as "pointless" or "redundant"

It's really too bad when the people running the site know less than the people reading it.

Twoflower

More important things to worry about

[fatwreckfan]

As interesting as this is, I'd be more worried about someone actually stealing the machine than opening it up for components. Even in a office environment, who is going to check each machine to make sure the employee using it didn't crack it open to swipe some RAM?

Why not just use a chain to the desk which locks the case shut? Then you're safe in both cases.

Useless, useless, useless

[marxmarv]

This "design" is completely obvious to anyone the least bit skilled in the state of the art, and frankly doesn't add much information at all. There's ZERO reason you would need a PLA for this project when 7400 series TTL has many available multi-input OR gate functions. What's worst, none of this works anyway because all you need to do is unplug the PC or otherwise disrupt the power to the gate or PLA to break into it (the normal state is, after all, active low).

So what we have here is some fourteen year old with his own "security" organization, a metric buttload of super glue and an utter lack of clue who writes a frankly useless article so that he can pretend he's important whilst slinging around big acronyms like "PLA" and "VHDL" when the tools they represent are useless to the task at hand. In other words, a snake-oil salesman.

-jhp, smacking down dim-bulbs everywhere

So Basically...

[Ribald]

...some 15 year old kid noticed the CI connector on his motherboard, his chassis didn't have a microswitch to connect it to, so he superglued one on. Then he comes up with an idea to make it sound complicated, throws in some acronyms (for devices/protocols that would make it _very_ much more complicated than needs be), invents his own security company, and offers to license some code to run it for a small fee. Brilliant.

If you can't tell from all the other posts, this has been implemented for a great number of years on nearly all business-grade desktops, usually accompanied by a provision for a physical lock.

If this kid actually gets someone to buy into this and pay him to license his "software", I've gotta give him at least a little respect. At least he's not the one paying for it.

--Ribald