If you take an SD flash card and carefully split it I believe you'll find
that the write protect switch is purely an optical interrupt. One position
permits writing, one does not, sensed by the reader. There was some recent
conversation about this on Twitter, complete with images, I forget which
security chatterbox was the source.
I suppose there are a variety of paths to get at driver software and
firmware so that a card with protection enabled would still permit write
access.
The world could use something as fast as SD flash, but secure as as
finalized CD/DVD. Hardware vendors are going to have to adapt to pressure
from the marketplace, and this can not happen soon enough to suit me.
On Sat, July 25, 2015 11:04 pm, Andreas Kuckartz wrote:
> intrigeri wrote:
>> I believe we're telling users about some security benefits of
>> booting Tails from a DVD (as opposed to from a USB stick), but apparently
>> there are some drawbacks too. Perhaps we need to adjust our doc
>> accordingly?
>
> First steps with Tails
> https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/index.en.html
>
>
> Please notice this line:
> "Installing onto a USB stick or SD card (recommended)"
>
>
> Choosing between burning a DVD and installing onto a USB stick
> or SD card https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/media/index.en.html
>
>
> That second page contains this statement:
> "Some USB sticks, SD cards, or SD card adapters have a read-only
> switch that can prevent your Tails from being altered, but be aware that
> this protection is most probably not ensured by the device itself: do not
> rely on untrusted computers to respect this feature."
>
> Suggestion: It would be great if it were possible to automatically
> test if a USB storage device is *really* write protected. That test could
> be executed while booting Tails and the user could be informed about the
> result.
>
> Cheers,
> Andreas
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