Hi,
I have a 8GB Kingston USB Stick but: wth if i loose the stick, forget it inside the workplace or if it get's stolen? Everyone can see my very sensitive data!
So here is my question: Do you know a USB Stick that asks for a Master Password if I stick it inside a foreign Computer? I know there are existing these Sandisk U3 Sticks, what exactly do they do? Maybe sb knows other solutions.
Happy Ney Year!
eke
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encrypt all the files you have.
A flash drive that has encryption software on it is a Lexar Secure.
My first flash drive, easy simple encryption.
!!
would be the need, this exists in various versions on the market. Sometimes rather expensive like 'ironkey'.
In fact, strict hardware encryption would be possible by the use of 3DES which can be implemented completely in hardware and this would be completely OS independent.
However since all usb sticks contain a controller, kind of processor, some suppliers use AES256 etc just as software solution stored inside the controller.
Some use even parts of windows system to do the work, this is not fair, this is not real hardware encryption then and will probably not work with Linux etc.
U3 changes the description of the partition and restores it when correct password is entered. Works with windows only, uses windows system files to do the job.
This does not mean the drive is somehow encrypted, all is still there , but the partition data are faked, so windows can not see it, actually with the newer versions of the U3 also linux can not see it just so easy.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
Try TrueCrypt. You can search the forums for a portable version, but it's great, easy to use, and extremely secure.
since driver has to be installed for it.
This makes the more and more upcoming hardware encryption solutions more portable and if real hardware solution then it will work on any OS.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
One problem with that, though. What if you forget a password? With software encryption, you can at least get your drive back and reformat. AFAIK, you can't do that with hardware encryption.
Every drive I've seen with hardware encryption has the ability to reset the device (losing all data, of course).
Caveat: Most drives I've seen that are 'password protected' but don't have hardware encryption do not fully erase your data when you reset them so you can easily recover it with a simple unerase utility.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
You could always use Eraser Portable.
It can shred the remains after a reset.
For anyone who missed the joke... the fact that you can reset these drives and then recover all the data means they're not secure
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
So you're saying the contents are not actually encrypted, just password protected? If so, you can circumvent that just by plugging the drive into a Linux or a Mac box.
some very old u3, asks me all the time if I want update since the version of the u3 software is insecure does in fact in some versions of linux not show properly when password protected, but I managed to copy simply sectors with dd from it.
With later versions this seems not work any more, the partition data is simply screwed up by the password protection somehow.
But other commercial sold password protection I was tempted and did spent some 20 usd or so, does not much more then make all files hidden and not much more.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
The "password protection" is in hardware and doesn't allow the drive to show up at the hardware level. Resetting the password (as you could do if you were to steal someone's password protected drive) is supposed to wipe the data for security. It just doesn't. It does a simple quick format leaving all the files intact and ready to be unerased by any unerase utility.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Since Truecrypt works only on Admin, any encryption software that works on limited accounts?
No software encryption can mount a virtual drive without admin rights. Period. People need to understand that and stop asking. You want to be able to have an encrypted drive mounted as a drive letter on every PC, you need to buy a stick with hardware encryption.
You can encrypt individual files on a drive, but that has issues as well. In order to open said files, they must be copied somewhere outside the encrypted file store to be opened by OpenOffice.org Portable or whatever app is opening them. When done, they must then be deleted. If you copy them locally, these is the issue of leaving things behind even after deleting (unless you securely erase them which takes time and won't happen in a crash). If you copy them to the portable drive temporarily, the same issue applies, though it is harder to securely delete from flash media.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
it doesn't copy the files from the virtual partition onto the unencrypted hardware, its integrates the unencrypted data as part of RAM. this makes it much more faster to open, use, and save files encrypted with truecrypt and the actual copying of a file back and forth (from encrypted to unencrypted and vice versa) takes a lot of time. it also saves disk writes.
That's beside the current point. What I'm saying is that it's useless if you don't have administrative rights (and you won't at a net cafe, library, university and school PCs, hotel business centers, most offices, etc). The only thing that allows you to have encrypted files securely on most PCs you come across (that show up as a drive letter and don't need to be copied back and forth to some other location) is a drive with hardware encryption.
We're well aware of the advantages of TrueCrypt and it's an excellent solution if you're only running from your own computers.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Can I ask have you negotiated with any manufacturers that build usbs/portable hard drives with hardware encryption? If they had PortableApps.com branding you'd probably find people would trust their encryption a lot more as we trust your judgment on such issues. Could be a potential selling point with manufacturers:-)
PortableApps.com Advocate
as I mentioned, I have some strange software from ENCRYPTX , it is called SecurFlash and for many people it could be of some use, thought it is not full encryption and not doing anything similar to Truecrypt.
But it is payware, thought not too expensive.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland