[Milsurplus] [Glowbugs] ARRL's ransom payment

[sbjohnston at aol.com]

 Andree Knott wrote:

>But the bad brat who is investigating your system can find 
>out that there is an access from time to time. This time slot 
>could be the occasion to infect your parallel system in some way.

There was no reference to the "time-slot" on any computer/server.  It was controlled by a varying date/time randomly set on a hardware timer relay which controlled the power to the network switch.  Someone would have to physically access the gear to discover the relay and plug the switch into continuous power to allow the backup servers to be remotely accessible.  It was not impossible to enter the locked server room, but it was beyond the reach of typical ransomware perpetrators or those who might want to trash our systems.

This was meant to be a reasonably-priced recovery system to allow reasonably-quick continuation of operations.  I would have preferred to also be able to harden the main system, but the resources were not available.


Steve WD8DAS  

sbjohnston at aol.com  
http://www.wd8das.net/  
http://af4k-crystals.com/  
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