Home Storage Area Network security

Sun Sep 21 21:58:48 UTC 2003

I received a few comments about file servers not serving files by default.

There are a bunch of home SAN products on the market.  They are designed
to make it very easy for customers to set up and use a home storage area
network.

I think these are very cool products, and although some geeks like
building stuff from scratch, other folks like buying stuff assembled and
working out of the box.  But they seem very dangerous when connected
directly to the open Internet without some access control turned on.
Instead they "assume" there will always be a secure firewall in place,
protecting the devices.

But in all the discussion about how secure their products are, you rarely
see an explicit requirement for these SAN devices to be installed behind
a firewall.  Just because you use Linux does not make SMB secure on the
Internet.

http://www.mirra.com/
Ease of Use: Just plug in Mirra, run the installer, and let it auto-detect
your network settings. Name your Mirra, say .ok. to the recommended backup
set (or select your own), then forget it. Remote access is simple to use
as well. No IPs to configure, no firewalls to penetrate. Mirra does it for
you.

http://www.martian.com/howtouseit.html
The NetDrive comes pre-configured from the factory, so you don't have to
worry about reading a long manual or learning about setting up file
serving software. Of course, if you do want to enable password protection
for your files or use a special network configuration, the NetDrive's
simple web-based configuration interface will let you.

What protocols does it serve files under?
The NetDrive uses the standard SMB protocol to share its files. This makes
it compatible with Windows PCs, Macs running OS X, and Linux boxes.