Self-Destructing USB Stick

Hugh Pickens writes "PC World reports that Victorinox, maker of the legendary Swiss Army Knife, has launched a new super-secure memory stick that sounds like something out of Mission: Impossible. The Secure Pro USB comes in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB sizes, and provides a variety of security measures including fingerprint identification, a thermal sensor, and even a self-destruct mechanism. Victorinox says the Secure is 'the most secure [device] of its kind available to the public.' The Secure features a fingerprint scanner and a thermal sensor 'so that the finger alone, detached from the body, will still not give access to the memory stick's contents.' While offering no explanation how the self-destruct mechanism works, Victorinox says that if someone tries to forcibly open the memory stick it triggers a self-destruct mechanism that 'irrevocably burns [the Secure's] CPU and memory chip.' At a contest held in London, Victorinox put its money where its mouth was and put the Secure Pro to the test offering a £100,000 cash prize ($149,000) to a team of professional hackers if they could break into the USB drive within two hours. They failed."

Comments

Re:What if they just breathe at the sensor?

[jridley]

Not this one, it's a linear sensor, you have to swipe your finger over it, and it reads sequentially.

Re:Shame it has a knife on it

[jweller]

I doubt very seriously that it's incendiary. I would guess that it is electrical in nature. I built an anti tamper device before and used a 300v photo flash cap run down the ground rail. VERY effective. Actually blew some SMB components off of the board and set several tantalum capacitors on fire.

Although I guess that could be considered incendiary....

Re:You're naive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Human life is worthless to criminals.

Human life is worthless to murderers. The term criminals covers a wide variety of law-breakers from litterers to mass-murderers.

Re:No secure USB Stick

[Andy Dodd]

http://www.spyrus.com/ - Right now, about the only people I would trust are IronKey and these guys. IronKey has the benefit of working under Linux though.