Because they are trying to get as much as they can for the least amount of money. It happens all the time. You can buy a 1TB external disk for about $500 but a quality SCSI array would be much more expensive. However, if your 1TB disk fails you lose everything. If you lose a disk in a SCSI array you don't. More and more people are trying to do things with as little money as possible and are sacrificing the security that comes along with the higher price of quality hardware.

Also, because they might be just plain stupid. :)

________________________________

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Philip Dorr Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 9:03 AM To: Oren Beck Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: Would Lin?ux have been affected by such virus preloads why would government agencies use large portable hard drives to store databases? Quote: Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said. The bureau said that hard discs with such a large capacity are usually used by government agencies to store databases and other information. On Nov 14, 2007 7:19 AM, Oren Beck [email protected] wrote:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2007/11/11/2003387202 _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list [email protected] http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug

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Yup. A RAID. With whatever inexpensive disk technology you want to use in it. In some cases it should be called RAED - Redundant Array of Expensive Disks. :)

I think you mean RAID, not SCSI.

At least in the case of the U.S., and to some extent the U.K., government officials understand that they work for a government which (a) tries to put lots of government-accessible back doors into every communication and networking system in existence, which (b) are then available for other non-governmental entities to exploit. Using a "sneakernet" of heavily-encrypted 500GB portable hard drives isn't such a bad idea in this era of "big brother" governments poking holes in their own protective walls.

As for the "plain stupid" idea, government agencies who allow just anyone, including the hard drive, to contact rogue websites in China probably aren't using a "sneakernet" of the type I described.

--- Phil Thayer [email protected] wrote:

Because they are trying to get as much as they can for the least amount of money. It happens all the time. You can buy a 1TB external disk for about $500 but a quality SCSI array would be much more expensive. However, if your 1TB disk fails you lose everything. If you lose a disk in a SCSI array you don't. More and more people are trying to do things with as little money as possible and are sacrificing the security that comes along with the higher price of quality hardware.

Also, because they might be just plain stupid. :)

On Nov 14, 2007 7:19 AM, Oren Beck [email protected] wrote:

why would government agencies use large portable hard drives to store databases?

Quote: Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said.

The bureau said that hard discs with such a large capacity are usually used by government agencies to store databases and other information.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2007/11/11/2003387202

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They use a 'distributed' filesystem.

On Nov 14, 2007 9:03 AM, Philip Dorr [email protected] wrote:

why would government agencies use large portable hard drives to store databases?