IronKey Unveils Self-Destructing USB Flash Drive

fysdt writes to share that IronKey has released a USB flash drive with self-destruct capability. Specializing in "secure flash drives," IronKey has launched the S200 aimed at government and enterprise customers, "featuring hardened physical security, the latest Cryptochip technology, active anti-malware and enhanced management capabilities. It's the 'first and only USB storage device to achieve FIPS 140-2, Level 3 validation' and delivers advanced Cryptochip featuring AES-256, tamper-resistance and self-destruction circuitry."

Comments

Re:Nerdgasm

[afidel]

You're impressed that they coated the circuit board with black epoxy? The only impressive thing about that is they use so little power that heat transfer isn't an issue.

Encryption is just as good as self destruction

[basementman]

What's the point of having it self destruct? Encrypt any old flash drive with True Crypt and you have accomplished the same thing at a much lower price. Want to destroy the data? Hit yourself on the head with a crowbar, making you forget the password. Problem solved.

Re:Encryption is just as good as self destruction

[mlts]

The advantage of having it drop access to the data after a certain amount of tries is the same reason people use cryptographic tokens -- brute forcing a passphrase becomes a non issue.

There is another feature of the IronKey that isn't mentioned -- encryption on a machine, say at a student computer lab, but without requiring administrative rights to access the data. A lot of schools disallow admin access, and this is required to mount virtual volumes (TrueCrypt, BestCrypt, PGP, etc.) Having software to allow access to the drive that never needs to leave user space is a good thing in these cases.

IronKey does have a market. Especially for students at larger universities where there are people who lurk in the 24 hour computer labs just looking for a USB flash drive to steal. With a stolen USB flash drive, they can either sell the done homework, or if someone has a paper for a popular class that isn't turned in, actually take the word processing document and call it theirs. The downside is that the distinctive metal case does lure thieves, but the user has to figure out a balance. To the user, is the data on the drive worth the price premium, especially if the data can be used by a thief or extortionist? This applies to faculty too. I'm sure there are those who would be more than happy to sell any test or quiz data that was gleaned from a USB flash drive swiped from a faculty lab.

Another use for these USB flash drives is delivering to a customer something extremely confidental (such as TrueCrypt keyfiles or one time pads) that will be used for future communication of large volumes of data. For example, the customer gets the passphase from a rep, while a secure courier drops off the IronKey. This way, the data never crosses the Internet.

Re:What a bad idea

[NecroPuppy]

Correct.

In many branches, they are currently banned, largely because of the viral vector issue.

Ironkey also supports Linux!

[AMuse]

I'm using an Ironkey at work (have been for about 2 years now) and the thing has been rock solid. However, the main reason I selected it is that it's the only key that I've had the opportunity to trial which is both FIPS 140-2l2 compliant *AND* supports Linux.

I use it with WinXP and MacOSX daily and yes, they do ship with "alpha" Linux drivers. Not full support like Win* but enough to read and write the encrypted data, which is all I really use.

Although the company claims that you can now "initialize" a key on MacOS, all the versions I've used required an initial bootstrapping under Windows before being cross-platform usable.