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Hollow Spy Coins
Bruce Schneier's blog links to a few sources for hollow spy coins, one being BoingBoing's Bazaar — where a nickel that can hold a microSD card costs $27. Another is Slashdot's sister company ThinkGeek, where you can get hollow quarters and half-dollars in the low 20s. As if corporate and government security geeks didn't have enough to worry about.
This is just a slashvertisement for hollowed-out coins. I would really consider them "spy coins" as the title is selling them to us. A "spy coin" should actively do some spying, really. I could just as well call my wallet a "spy wallet", as it can hold mico-SD cards too.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
hey kdawson, if you're going to try to slip in an ad for your sister company in a "news story", at least mark it up as an advertisement.
This is just wrong. kdawson should be fired for such a breach of ethics.
... with the federal deficit exploding, the fed is doing a fine job of hollowing out ALL you money, not just the change in your pocket.
Considering how laptops have become fair game for involuntary search and seizure at US borders, I think putting your 'important stuff' on a microSD card inside a hollow coin is probably a good idea.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
You can walk right through security (airport, border, corporate) with a microSD card in your pocket and nobody blinks an eye. Trying to "smuggle" a MicroSD card through is more likely to result in you getting caught and treated badly (even if it isn't even illegal). If the data on the MicroSD card is what you're trying to hide, a better spy device would be a trick card... say, which was internally partitioned into two cards with some very obscure way (SW or HW) of switching between them. Put innocuous data on one side, stick it in your camera, phone, music player, whatever. Even if the goons search the card, that's all they find. Short the right contacts or send the right command, and get access to the "evil" data.
Picture this: a guy is busy with the little opening ring on a handful of change and NONE of them open. Say bye-bye to your data on that sd card. :D
Considering how laptops have become fair game for involuntary search and seizure at US borders, I think putting your 'important stuff' on a microSD card inside a hollow coin is probably a good idea.
My blackberry has a microSD card in it. I have passed through many different customs / airport security examinations and nobody has ever examined the contents of the card. I don't see the point of paying for an even smaller microSD card carrier, when I already have a small microSD reader that I carry with me everywhere that nobody ever raises an eye towards.
And even if my phone is off, or the battery is dead, it still does just fine at carrying the card and looking extremely ordinary. You could also substitute most Motorola phones in the same role, and any number of other phones that I haven't paid attention to that also use microSD.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I think you'd be better off with a TrueCrypt file named DSC13423.jpg stored on an SDHC card loaded inside a point and shoot camera. Better if it is surrounded by other images with sequential numbers that make sense too.
I, for one, would probably waste far too much of my limited lifespan just opening and closing the hollow coin, sounds cooler than your average desk toy.
They seem virtually irrelevant as either a security threat or a tool of asymmetric covert operation, though. MicroSD cards are already small and durable(resistant to liquids, magnetic fields, a number of common solvents, surprising amounts of mechanical strain, etc.). Perhaps more importantly, they are already dirt-cheap and extremely common consumer electronics. Unlike, say, little bits of microfilm, which might not like being stored under your tongue or embedded in the gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe, and which are instantly suspicious on discovery(since virtually nobody used tiny pieces of microfilm in the course of ordinary activity. Libraries always used long spools or large cards of the stuff, and hardly anybody else used any at all), a microSD card, even a plainly visible one, arouses no particular suspicion. Virtually every mid-market cellphone comes with one, lots of PMPs use them for storage expansion, you can even get them at pharmacies.
Even in fascist Orwellistan, or some high-security facility, where it would be legal and accepted to inspect people for them, it would be an immensely tedious chore, because they are so common.
If you are running some sort of high-security operation, your computers would(unless you are a terminal incompetent) be configured without any means of transferring data to unapproved storage media(configuring the OS to, say, only load drivers for USB_HID devices with vendor ID matching whoever your vendor is, and load no driver and send an alert with the machine name, logged on user, and lsusb output to IT security is not commonly done; but it is hardly rocket surgery.) Trying to stop secrets from leaving by physically intercepting tiny chunks of flash memory at the door is just stupid.
While I concede it's unlikely anyone would actively look for such a thing - let alone find it - if they do you have a problem.
Previously, you were Just Another Passenger.
Now, you are A Passenger Who Has An Item Obviously Designed to Hide Something Right Under Somebody's Nose.
If that doesn't attract further interest, I don't know what will. I think the "take it out and plug it into your phone" suggestion was better.