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Encrypted USB Key With TOR, Firefox
An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has a writeup on the new IronKey — a self-destructing, hardware-encrypted and -authenticated USB flash drive with on-board secure Firefox, high-speed TOR network, password manager, and online encrypted backup. Here is the demo page. $79 for a 1GB, $149 for 4GB." Ironkey works on XP and Vista only. Let's hope its self-destruct feature works better than Secustick's.
The demo page is mostly blank. Oh, well. Guess it saved on web design costs?
It's legal to possess one here in airstrip one, but I'm going to need some plausibility deniablity with my self destructing key thanks to the RIP act.
I agree. The best security is to have your own trusted CPU/display/input (i.e. a laptop or pda). This is getting easier all the time -- a PDA or cellphone is close to sufficient for most non-data-entry tasks.
Failing that, I'd go with something which uses commodity, standard, and commonly available technology at the lowest level possible. It's PROBABLY the case that a DVI monitor is not bugged; much less likely that a random DVI monitor at a net cafe is itself secure than that the host OS is secure.
The host OS and applications installed are by far the weakest link. I carry a laptop everywhere, but the next step down from that is a bootable USB flash drive with your choice of secured OS installation on it. It's easy enough to implement disk encryption.
It is also fairly straightforward to use "write only" public key cryptography (i.e. each time you save your work, encrypt it with a public key, the private key for which is held on trusted hardware at home).
The only customization I'd do to the USB dongle would be for protecting the keying data -- some way to mount a / partition, but have a data partition which is encrypted with PKC held on the USB device, with only the passphrase being entered into the local PC, rather than an actual key entered via the host PC. This in practice only gives you marginally better security, as if you used a hardware-trojaned PC (or vmware installation...) to boot your USB device, that trojaned machine could just copy the relevant data out of your USB key.
There are a lot of "procedural" ways to improve security with this USB boot thing. Maybe have multiple partitions, each with different keys, per project or security level. If you're at a machine belonging to client A, and need access to client A files, you can stick your USB in a client A machine, boot, and then only unlock the client A partition on the USB. Or if you just need basic secure computing, but not access to your stored files, you could just unlock the OS partitions, leaving your own data partitions encrypted. Or, just buy multiple USB keys, and stick the least important key into the machine that is needed to accomplish your task.
http://feraga.com/node/94 - why not use this instead on any key...
But for $149 you could get a simple 16gb thumb drive and just use TrueCrypt...
I did a talk for my local LUG back in September of 2006 describing exactly how to do this using TrueCrypt for Linux and Windows
I described in detail how to install, boot and use the USB key as a bootable Linux distribution, and also how to use the USB key in Windows (or Linux) with TrueCrypt, using some fancy tricks to auto-prompt for the password upon insertion of the key, how to use a slew of PortableApps on the key, and even a launchable menu to find and access them.
This was almost a full year ago. IronKey, whatever it is, is nothing new.
You know, you are allowed to use something other than your birthday, your pet's name, and your favorite Transformer as passwords... Some of us use random sequences of characters. If you can't remember such a thing, use a pronounceable string of letters (make it plenty long), such as generated by pwgen. It is much easier to remember a string of sounds that is perhaps 4 syllables long than a string of characters which is 12 characters long.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
There is basically one option that works: A secure microcontoller, that keeps the key in internal RAM and does all the encryption and decryption itself. Everything else can be broken by interrupting or disabling the writes. AFAIK you cannot get any secure microcontroller for the price they claim. Certainly you cannot get one that does encryption and decryption with decent speeds.
According to the website, it does a "flash trash". This is insecure. Flash writing is relatively slow and draws a lot of energy. This allows stopping and preventing writes to flash. Also, unless they use special flash chips, the same hack as with the Secustick will work. Again, for the price I do not see them getting a specially bonded or manufactured Flash chip. Even if they do, desolder the chip and read it directly. You can then clone it for unlimited attack attempts.
I ecpect this will be relatively easy to break, just as the Secustick, i.e. at best a small step above a conventional stick encrypted, e.g., with TrueCrypt.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I don't get why they implement these things only for Windows.
/mnt/flashdrive/password.in
:P
It's so trivial to implement security on a flash drive that's fully cross platform.
When you insert the drive, mount a basic filesystem with an empty file in it called "password.in". Then all you have to do is:
echo 'yourfr3ak1npa$$w0rd!!11' >
upon which the "virtual" filesystem on the drive will receive the password and present a new USB storage device, the unlocked filesystem.
This implementation will work on any platform that can mount FAT, and is easy to put behind front-ends when used on Windows or Mac OS X systems.
But nooo, they use some useless proprietary stuff that makes the key useless on anything but a Windows box. Really smart.
-Z
Instead of this, you can get Fearless Browser for free and install it on any USB drive. It is far more secure than any Windows version because it runs in a Gentoo-based virtual machine. It comes preconfigured with Tor and OpenDNS anti-phishing, and is updated frequently. I carry it around everywhere I go and use it at friend's houses and public terminals that I don't trust.
I wouldn't buy one of these to save my life. Jerks got my email address from our receptionist, added me to their marketing SPAM list, and guess what, their reply address and unsubscribe links are broken. I know where I'd like to stick their ironkey...
We started with M$ because it's the largest market. We have MacOS working in the lab and are also working on Linux support. We recognize that Linux users are the most security savvy, but that part of the market is miniscule compared to the Windows market (think about financial services, hospitals and government markets). We've spent over $7M in research and development on the product, and unfortunately we've got to target the larger markets first. - Dave Jevans. IronKey
You can learn more about why hardware encryption is better than software encryption in our whitepaper: https://learn.ironkey.com/docs/IronKey_Whitepaper- Benefits_of_Hardware_Encryption.pdf
Briefly:
- it is 5 to 10 times faster than software encryption, which is important if copying large files or running portable applications off the device
- the key storage is far more secure. IronKey stores randomly generated AES keys in a tamper-resistant chip which will destroy itself if physically or electrically tampered with.
- there is no way to prevent brute-force password or key guessing attacks with software encryption. I can eventually crack any TrueCrypt encrypted data. IronKey manages password unlocking in hardware and cannot be brute forced. Also the storage volume is not mounted until the password is correct, unlike TrueCrypt on a regular flash drive (Imagine if I copy your TrueCrypt files onto 100,000 bots, and start cracking in parallel....)
- no drivers and no administrator rights are needed with hardware encryption.
- we can use the same cryptochip secure storage to manage stored passwords, which makes it more secure than software password managers.
To address your issue with malware on the host killing the drive with 11 bad password attempts... we prevent this by requiring the drive to be physically unplugged and re-plugged in after 3 bad password attempts.
If malware is on the computer, it copying your password is the least of your worries. Once you log into the device, it can copy all your files. Nothing you can do about that.
We have designed a keylogger proof IronKey, but this will be coming in a future hardware design.
Dave Jevans. IronKey
Sorry, your "dd" attack will not work on an IronKey. We do not mount the secure volume until the password is correctly entered. In fact, we present as 2 devices to the computer. Your data is stored as a removable media. We don't "insert" the media until the password is entered correctly. That is one aspect why it's better than a regular USB key. Our security whitepaper gives a description of how it works, and the benefits of the approach over software implementations. https://learn.ironkey.com/docs/IronKey_Whitepaper- Benefits_of_Hardware_Encryption.pdf
Oh yeah, we wanted to put some thermite into it, but it wouldn't pass CE safety tests.
Thanks,
Dave Jevans. IronKey
Thanks to everyone for your really interesting comments and questions. We will update our website to make it more clear that we have a FAQ section that answers many of the questions posed here on SlashDot. https://learn.ironkey.com/faqs We also have a whitepaper that describes how our hardware encryption works, the threat models, and how it is better than software encryption. https://learn.ironkey.com/docs/IronKey_Whitepaper- Benefits_of_Hardware_Encryption.pdf
We released Windows versions first, as the majority of the market is using that OS. We are working on Linux and MacOS versions.
Thanks,
Dave Jevans @ IronKey
Z, Unfortunately you're not correct. The flash drive firmware would have to be able to parse the FAT file system in order for this to work. USB storage media does not receive data as files, but rather as blocks, at a much lower level than the windows file system. Also, your approach basically sends your password in the clear over USB. We AES encrypt our USB traffic, protecting your password from USB level sniffers. We have IronKey working on MacOS now, and are working on Linux. Please be aware that we are more than a secure flash drive. We've got hardware encrypted password storage, strong 2-factor authentication (the firefox has a PKCS11 driver that talks to our onboard crypto). Dave @ IronKey
The AES keys are not accessible, because they are not stored in the flash memory, but rather in our cryptochip which is tamper-resistant. The AES keys are not based on a password (they are generated by a random number generator), thus they are very strong. This means that password guessing isn't going to be effective for cracking the encrypted data. You would have to do an exhaustive AES key space attack. Dave @ IronKey
We run a number of TOR nodes across the world. The TOR client selects these preferentially. Thus you get higher bandwidth, lower latency and more predictable performance than using the regular public TOR network, where you could end up going through some guys computer connect to the net on a DSL or dial-up line. Dave @ IronKey
TrentTheThief, I have no idea who you are, but your statement is patently false: "Ironkey provides the US gov't access to anything it wants." The US government, and anyone else, are free to purchase IronKeys. On the EU side of things, if you use our backup services, then yes we would have some data in the US. However, that data is encrypted on your IronKey, so it's just an encrypted blob. Also, we don't know who a given user is, so there's no way to track that back to an individual customer. Dave @ IronKey.