Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!psuvax1!psuvm.bitnet!cunyvm.bitnet!i78bc
From: I78BC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Michael Polymenakos)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Protecting directories from peeping eyes (how???)
Message-ID: <1807I78BC@CUNYVM>
Date: 20 Dec 88 14:15:56 GMT
References: <46@VAX1.CC.UAKRON.EDU> <8798@mhuxu.UUCP> <17581@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: The City University of New York - New York, NY
Lines: 37
DISCLAIMER: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article

In article <17581@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU>, oawx@vax5.CIT.CORNELL.EDU says:
>Use a disk search utility (NU or whatever) to scan the disk for
>the name of the directory.  When you find the sector that the
>directory name is on, edit it.  It is at this point that you
>can do whatever you want, ie put weird chars in the name field,
>change pointers to a bogus locations, or whatever.
>
>Eric Cox

 Even better, use lowercase characters in the directory name. While
most programs can enter a directory with a weird name (especially NCD
and XTREE - type programs), using lowercase characters will choke most
programs (every program I've tried this with, anyway).
 Same pain as above though: You have to manually change the name to a
standard one later, in order to access the directory. Besides, there
are many people around who also know how to change back the name.
 Also, such a directory will prevent CHECKDSK or BACKUP from working
properly (no potential damage though).

 You may also want to try this: if you have a partitioned hard disk
(divided to two logical disks) say C and D, then you can store all
your secret data on drive D. Use a program (from drive C !) to
scramble the FAT table or the root directory of D (with direct disk
writes.) Provided you have a way of restoring the tables to their
original state later, this should do the job. NU provides a facility
for editing the FAT table; DEBUG can also do the job (not easily though).
 Remember to turn the machine off (or reboot) immediately after you
scramble the FAT.
 I would not mess with the file pointers; it can create subtle problems
if there are disk writes after the pointers are changed.


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|  ||  |   |||||  ||     Michael S. Polymenakos      BC-CUNY
   |||| ||| || | |||||   ----------------------      New York
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