From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG  Wed Oct  5 19:25:13 2005
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Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 12:25:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Philip Hallstrom <freebsd@philip.pjkh.com>
To: Jonathon McKitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>
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Cc: Joe S <js.lists@gmail.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Hidden spot on hard drives?
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> On Wed, Oct 05, 2005 at 11:55:18AM -0700, Joe S wrote:
> : Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
> : >the company where I work (with Windows) is evaluating a copy protection
> : >product that stores info somewhere on the HDD where the user cannot touch
> : >it,
> : >a format will not erase it, and Norton Ghost will not find it.
> : >
> : >1.  Any idea where this info could be stored?
> : >2.  Any way the same thing could be done under FreeBSD?
> : >
> : >Thanks,
> : >
> : >jm
> :
> : # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/zero
> :
> : Will overwrite the entire drive.
>
> Thanks.  What I was wondering is if there is a way to do the same copy
> protection in FreeBSD, where I could store the data in the same place on the
> drive where the user cannot access it.

Normal, average users yes.  But as the above stated... dd will let me (as 
root) get to any part of the disk I want.  If you're users don't have root 
access, then just make it a normal file owned by root, chmod 400.

I seem to remember some software put it's license key in the boot sector 
(this was way back when and I might be not remembering correctly).  But 
even that can be read using dd...  not sure how I'd do it with windows, 
but I'm sure it's possible.