Simple and Effective Physical Security Case Mods
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   Written by P(?)NYB(?)Y
   Tuesday, 27 December 2005

   Privacy and security are important issues for most hackers. Many of us
   go to great lengths to protect the data on our machines. And, for the
   most part, we do a fairly good job at it. We know the importance of
   setting WEP encryption on our wireless networks, and scanning our
   machines for viruses and holes in security. But, in our struggle to
   keep people from accessing our information from the outside, many of us
   seem to forget about the security threats walking around your house
   every day. In order to have complete protection, you need to be in
   total control of who has access to your box and when they have it.
   After all, you don't want your mom getting on your computer to do
   stupid mom stuff and finding your 80 GBs of porn and MP3s. So, I
   dreamed up this little mod to keep out such prying eyes.

   The first concept is really simple, if people can't use the mouse or
   keyboard, they can't access your machine. You'll need to have a case
   with a locking door over the drive bays. Just drill two holes in a free
   space behind the door and put in two SPST switches. Then desolder the
   keyboard jack from the motherboard and solder in a length of wire to
   one pole of the first switch and then from the second pole back to the
   space on the motherboard where the keyboard jack once connected.  Do
   the same for the mouse plug. Now flip both of the switches into the off
   position and try to type something or move the mouse. You shouldn't be
   able to do either. This is good, because it means you did everything
   right. Just close and lock the door to your case. Now you can leave
   your computer alone without worry. Unless, of course, your mom is some
   kind of uber-hacker, in which case i'm single.

   Let's say you were running late for work or school or whatnot, and you
   forgot to lock your computer case door. The following concept provides
   an extra layer of security on top of the provisions supplied by the
   last concept. This concept brings back the locking case. Heck, you
   might even want to use the same computer we did the previous
   modifications to. What you will need here is some wire and a
   key-switch. A key switch is just what it sounds like, a switch that
   makes use of a key to flip between poles. You can really use any kind
   of key-switch you want as long as it is single pole. I used one with a
   cylindrical lock, simply because they are much harder to pick with
   standard lockpicks than a pin-tumbler lock.

   The modification itself is very simple. You'll want to open up your
   case and remove the entire powerswitch. Then just insert the key-switch
   in its place (you might have to drill a larger hole for the switch) and
   wire it up to the same places the original power button connected to.
   This will prevent people from simply being able to turn your computer
   on whenever they want. Only a person with a key to the lock can turn it
   on.

   If you wanted to, you could even leave the original power button in
   place and add the key-switch into the circuit in a way so that pressing
   the power button would have no effect until the key-switch was
   activated.

   A good friend of mine, when speaking about phyiscal security, told me
   that the most important part of physical is to know your attacker. You
   have to know who it is you are trying to keep out of your files, and
   you have to know what lengths they are willing to go to get access.
   This article was written with that in mind, so don't expect these mods
   to keep everyone out. Just to secure your box a littlefurther, you
   might want to employ the concept described in the article "Building
   Cheap ID Cards" by barfbag (2600 magazine, issue 21:4) as well as
   install a hardware keylogger.  However,remember that neither of these
   two added security measures will work until the switch for the keyboard
   is turned on.

   Shouts to everyone, especially mesa and all the folks who help make
   BellCoreRadio great. Keep hacking.

   ponyboy@st0rage.org