On 17 June 2013 00:08, gnulinuxist@gmail.com wrote:
With so much espionage happening in computers, I was wondering whether a read only mounted partition is read only by software only or is there an electrical lock on the hdd, which does not seem possible for multi-partition disks as another partition may be writeable.
This is usually software-only. One can always mount -o remount,rw to get read-write access. Having said that, I have seen external drives having a physical switch that toggles write-mode. Also remember the old floppy disks which had a crude mechanical device for enabling write protection. :-)
Can a malicious software gain control of the electrical side of the hdd and modify or delete data, even on a read only mounted partition? For the military then, would it be better to use an entire disk as a single partition and lock it down electrically?
Not sure where the military came from. Our military at least (going by recent scams), seems to be contain more than its fair share of folks who are willing to be persuaded for the customary 30 pieces of silver.
Binand