How about this:
* Epoxy in all socketed devices on the motherboard
* Epoxy/destroy all empty sockets
This should prevent any kind of modification of your hardware that could be
done surreptitiously. Put this inside a tamper-resistant box so that they
can't try to play with the epoxy without you hearing about it -i.e. simple case
switch, etc.
Now, as for the danger of them cutting the power and removing the hard drive--
encrypt the hard drive. If you have physical access, that will ensure they'll
have to call you to enter the key every time they reboot the machine. If
that's not an option, you would want some form of challenge/response system to
let you decrypt the drive over the phone ("Mr Nonymous, your machine is stuck
at a strange prompt: 'Challenge 02F42D94B10CD902F1A' - what do you want us to
type?" etc).
As they could could modify the bootup code on the drive, in order to do a
secure challenge/response you'd probably need to use some special hardware --
along the lines of an internal SecurID card. Does anyone know of anything
that would fit the bill?
Ben
