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Self-Destructing USB Stick

Posted by samzenpus on from the secure-the-bits dept.

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."

5 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. What if they cut the finger and heat it by unity100 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    to 37 degrees celsius ?

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    1. Re:What if they cut the finger and heat it by jamesh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or alternatively, find someone the owner of the USB stick cares about and threaten to cut off that persons finger if the owner doesn't cooperate.

  2. Two hours? by mog007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Presumably, if you had physical access to the drive, wouldn't you have more time to crack it than two hours?

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  3. Thermal sensor? by zmotula · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.'

    Surely if somebody can chop off your finger he can also warm it up?

  4. I predict by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    that within 1-2 months we will find out that:

    1) the finger print scanner is not actually linked to the encryption key, but is just to "power on" the device.

    2) the encryption key is processed in host (windoze) based software and that a usb control packet (the exact same packet for all devices) is simply sent to the onboard controller to tell it to "allow access".

    3) the encryption, while purporting to be aes256, is so poorly implimented that it in effect becomes a 16-bit key, thereby becoming brute-forcable on an old C-64 in only 2 days.