2005-11-23, Responding to spodosaurus...

Great idea!

However... to push the (still practical) analogy a tad
further and reiterate my point in more detail...

What happens if the walls are so thin you can punch through
them? Or the hinges are so cheap you can virtually pull the
door out by hand? Or the Windows are so easy to get through
its hardly worth locking the crappy door?

And how about those shared attic spaces? What if your next
burgler comes through from inside next door's house? Or
crawls through the underneath and pops up in your kitchen?

Your wonderful idea, unfortunately, would only work if the
rest of the house was securable too.

Lets draw a more detailed picture here...

Two houses.

One has a typical layout, meaning once a burgler is in the
front door, the back door, a window, or whatever, they're in
and pretty much free to do as they like.

Now add a party full of house guests, who will inevitably
invite THEIR freinds, and a few gate-crashers while the
party continues.

Any suggestions as to how to hold on to your family silver
in this house?

The other house was built to be secure.

To get in it at all, you have to get past the scanners that
surround it. Fail this test and the house auto-locks. No way
in. You'll get recorded trying as well, and reports sent to
some other place.

Then, assuming you got to the front door, as trying anything
else would trigger those alarms and protection devices,
you'll need to convince it that you are who you say you are.
Faking it MAY get you into the hallway, but this may be a
containment trap (search "honeynet").

Then, IF you have a set of permission already allowed in the
house database, you can start to acces the areas and things
you have permission to access. Try switching on a light you
don't have permission to use, and you may be lucky and get a
caution its not your light. You may not even get to see the
switch however.

Try accessing the house's database, again, you might get a
warning, and certainly will be recorded and tracked, and a
record of your activities sent somewhere.

Actually manage to break into something, or figure out a
trick to get you past a door that does not have your name on
it, and guess what, alarms and recordings, and probably a
system shutdown if you push any harder.

Should you come back to this house, there's also a pretty
good chance it will recognise you, deny access (or treat
you to a "honeypot") and record where you came from for the
benefit of the admin/engineers. You won't know how many
mistakes it will allow you. It won't be many.

Try forcing a lock, and hear those bars drop behind you.

Try breaking a window. What window? >:)

Now which house would you keep your family silver in?

And which one would you let Cousin Sony into?
(Obvious answer right? But the point is good. ;)

So my point here is to outline the fact that IF you have a
house like the first example, its no surprise it got
burgled. The main problem with the Sony thing seems to be
that people got TOLD about it. This kind of thing is going
on ALL THE TIME! All those Windows Freebies, M$ updates,
other company's products, are all doing the same thing,
stealing data from your computer, collating complex
"demographic data" about you, but nobody seems to worry.

People don't usually worry because nothing TELLs them to
worry. No "You have been hacked and your ID recorded in
detail by a private commercial operation" warning messages,
no "Microsoft issue yet another serious security warning!"
(That'll be the day huh?)

What Sony have done is not new, its not even clever. The
ONLY thing they did wrong was risking exposing how OPEN a
Win_d'o$ OS is, and BillyCorp understandably got a bit
pissed off at this.

So, does THAT answer your question about

    "Why not just fix the bloody door?"

...perchance?

    8)

http://tinyurl.com/aw52k

...should give you an idea of what you're missing with a
Win_d'o$ OS. (There's plenty more sources of info available
should you wish to learn more.)

Mike@N.UK

P.S. House number two is free, and you can customise it too! :)