System and method for controlling access to personal computer system resources
First Claim
1. A method for limiting a user'"'"'s access to computer resources of a computer system, comprising:
- relocating an original master boot record and an original partition table from a first location to a second location on a hard disk;
providing a corrupted master boot record and a corrupted partition table at said first location so that a program using the corrupted master boot record and said corrupted partition table is unable to initialize said system; and
using, via a security protection program, at system initialization said corrupted master boot record and locating via the security protection program, said original master boot record and said original partition table at said second location to initialize said computer system.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A system and method for controlling access to computer resources of a computer is disclosed. The access control program preferably includes a plurality of program components, which may be terminate stay resident (TSR) programs, for intercepting interrupt service calls. The interrupt service calls are verified to determine whether the user is authorized for the resource requested in the service call. The program components use files containing a list of authorized resources for the computer user. These files are, preferably, used at system initialization to modify the system resource files used by the operating system to identify program and program groups which are displayed to a user. A boot protection program is also disclosed which may be installed with the access control program to prevent a boot program stored on media within the diskette drive from acquiring control of the system during system initialization. The boot protection program corrupts the master boot record, boot record and partition table so that other boot programs do not have sufficient information to initialize the system. The master boot program is modified to access this requisite information elsewhere during system initialization.
270 Citations
18 Claims
-
1. A method for limiting a user'"'"'s access to computer resources of a computer system, comprising:
-
relocating an original master boot record and an original partition table from a first location to a second location on a hard disk; providing a corrupted master boot record and a corrupted partition table at said first location so that a program using the corrupted master boot record and said corrupted partition table is unable to initialize said system; and using, via a security protection program, at system initialization said corrupted master boot record and locating via the security protection program, said original master boot record and said original partition table at said second location to initialize said computer system. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4)
-
-
5. A software-implemented system for controlling access to a hard disk during a computer system initialization comprising:
-
a modified master boot record written to a memory location on a hard disk corresponding to location for an original master boot record; a corrupted partition table written to a memory location on said hard disk corresponding to a location for an original partition table; an original partition table stored to a location on said hard disk different from said corrupted partition table; and a corrupted boot record written to a memory location on said hard disk corresponding to a location for an original boot record whereby said modified master boot record accesses previously stored information during system initialization to restore said boot record for system initialization. - View Dependent Claims (6, 7, 8, 9)
-
-
10. A computer implemented method that prevents unauthorized access to a computer system, comprising the steps of:
-
moving an original master boot record from its original location to a non-standard location in memory; creating a modified master boot record by storing a modified partition table in the modified master boot record that has different specifications than the original master boot record, said modified partition table containing specifications that prevents an operating system from booting from a diskette, thereby preventing access to computer system resources; storing the modified master boot record at the location corresponding to the original location of the original master boot record; and using said modified master boot record to control access to computer system resources. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12)
-
-
13. A computer implemented method that protects a computer system from unauthorized access, comprising the steps of:
-
accessing a boot record of a hard disk; changing the boot record data in a manner that prevents an unauthorized user from accessing the hard disk; and storing information that enables the original boot record data to be restored by an access protection program. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
-
Specification