Hard drive security system

• US 5,012,514 A
• Filed: 06/26/1990
• Issued: 04/30/1991
• Est. Priority Date: 06/26/1990
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Stephen R. Schramke
• Original Assignee: Renton, Paul
• Inventors: Renton, Paul
• Primary Examiner(s): Tarcza, Thomas H.
• Assistant Examiner(s): SWANN, TOD R
• Application Number:
  US07/543,429
• Time in Patent Office: 308 Days
• Field of Search: 380/3, 380/4, 380/23, 380/26, 380/52, 340/825.34, 364/280.2, 364/280.8, 364/969.1, 364/969.4, 364/969.3, 364/975.2
• US Class Current: 713/192
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/80 in storage media based on magnetic or optical technology, e.g. disks with sectors preventing unauthorised reproduction or copying of disc-type recordable media G11B20/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4401 Bootstrapping security arrangements therefor G06F21/57

Abstract

A security system to prevent un-authorized access to the hard drive of a personal computer system. The security system consists of a plug-in expansion card containing a program on an EPROM, a device driver program which requests the password for access, and other programs to establish the valid passwords for the security system, provide an audit trail of computer access, and other functions. The program on the EPROM disables the floppy drives until a valid password has been entered, forcing the booting process to be controlled and forcing the computer to boot off of the hard drive and request a password via the device driver. A skilled programmer, even with a complete knowledge of the security system'"'"'s details of operation, can not write a program which can be booted off of a diskette in order to bypass the security system. The passwords and user IDs for the security system are stored on the hard drive of the computer inside the device driver program. The elimination of the need to provide any random access memory, EEROM or other non-volatile memory in which to store the passwords contributes to the low manufacturing cost for the security system.

Claims

1. A security system for controlling access to a personal computer, said computer containing a hard drive, a random access memory, and at least one expansion slot, comprising:

an expansion card for insertion into said expansion slot;

a file residing on said hard drive containing the established passwords of the security system;

said expansion card containing a read only memory for storing a first program having a first portion for altering the interrupt table of the personal computer so as to establish said first program as a part of the disk drive management interrupt of said computer, and further operative to write into a new location in said random access memory the initial values of the interrupt table altered by said first portion of said first program;

said first program having a second portion operative to store in said random access memory one or more flags indicative of the status of the security system;

said first program having a third portion responsive to said one or more flags and the disk drive management interrupt of said computer, operative to deny access to any floppy disk drives while said flags indicate that the security system is active by returning an error code to said computer;

a second program existing upon, and executed from, said hard drive, operative to read said file existing upon said hard drive containing the established passwords of the security system, and operative to request and verify a password against said file, and operative to deny access to the computer system until a valid password is entered, and further operative to modify said one or more flags in said random access memory so as to reflect the current status of the security system.

5. A security system as recited in claim 1, where the memory address for the read only memory is in the address range of C0000H up to and including E0000H.

6. A security system as recited in claim 1, where said first portion of said first program alters the interrupt 13H vector to point to a portion of said first portion of said first program.

7. A security system as recited in claim 1, where said first portion of said first program writes into the existing memory of said computer a checksum which is the serial addition of the initial values of an interrupt table entry and said one or more flags.

8. A security system as recited in claim 7, where said one or more flags, said initial interrupt table entries, and said checksums are placed in a plurality of locations in said existing memory of said computer system.

11. A security system as recited in claim 1, where said first program is further operative to alter the keyboard input by altering the keyboard interrupt vector, and said first program is still further operative to eliminate the actions of certain keystrokes, so as to prevent keyboard actions from affecting the boot procedure.

2. A security system as recited in claim, where the second program is a device driver.

3. A security system as recited in claim 2, where the established passwords are stored in said device driver file upon said hard drive.

4. A security system as recited in claim 3, where the established passwords stored in said device driver are stored in a scrambled or encrypted form.

9. A security system as recited in claim 3, where said valid password is stored inside of a copy of said device driver in memory, so as to provide said valid password to other programs designed to read said valid password.

10. A security system as recited in claim 9, where a third program reads said valid password from said device driver and creates a file which contains the valid passwords, so as to create an audit trail of computer access.

12. A method of providing a security system and denying authorized access to a personal computer, said computer containing a hard drive, a random access memory, and at least one expansion slot, said method comprising:

establishing a file on said hard drive which contains the established passwords for the security system;

temporarily disabling the operation of any floppy drives of the computer with an expansion card inserted into said expansion slot, said expansion card containing a first program which alters the disk drive management interrupt of said personal computer, operative to establish said first program as a part of the disk drive management interrupt of said computer, so as to force the personal computer to boot the operating system from said storing in said random access memory one or more flags indicative of the status of the security system;

collecting and verifying the validity of a password with a second program existing upon and executed from said hard drive, where said second program establishes the validity of a password by comparison with said file on said hard drive containing the established passwords of the security system;

denying access to the computer system until a valid password is entered;

modifying the one or more flags in said random access memory to indicate the new status of the security system;

re-enabling the operation of any floppy drives of the computer once a valid password has been entered.

13. The method as recited in claim 12, where the second program is a device driver.

14. The method as recited in claim 13, where the established passwords for said security system are stored in said device driver file on said hard drive.

15. The method as recited in claim 14, where the established passwords stored in said device driver are stored in a scrambled or encrypted form.

16. The method as recited in claim 12, where said first program alters the interrupt 13H vector to point to a portion of said first program.