4 ms·
In principle you could do even more clever things, such as powering up ports on the hub based on external conditions, or timing, or counters. The sky's the limi
by kabdib 15y ago
In principle you could do even more clever things, such as powering up ports on the hub based on external conditions, or timing, or counters. The sky's the limit.
Imagine a storage device that only enumerated when it was upside down, or in darkness, or at 2:30AM-2:35AM on Thursdays, or at just above freezing?
I wonder how large the market for something like this is?
- jballanc 15y agoOk, you got me thinking and now I have to assume that someone must have already thought this up, because it would be so immensely useful! Imagine a USB key that behaves like a normal USB key, but if you invert it exactly 3 times in < 10s, then it activates a secondary storage partition. Put mundane family photos or music or such on the first portion, secret documents on the secondary. Sure, someone could disassemble the device to discover the hidden documents, but the point is that most people, after inserting the device and finding the photos and music, would just discard it as uninteresting...
- dekz 15y agoHopefully they don't struggle plugging it in and accidentally rotate 3 times in that time frame, but your point is still valid. Also encrypt with truecrypt and this gets very interesting.
- wnight 15y agoEspecially if when mounted this way it kept much of the regular data and the true-crypt partition (appearing as random noise) was 1-in-4 interleaved throughout making it look like a uninteresting read error on a bank of chips.
- shabble 15y agoStick an accelerometer on there, and detect spikes corresponding to someone tapping the device. Then implement some sort of rhythm-based security as desired :) Turning it around would be pretty hard if it's plugged into a PC, and it can't really do the sensing unplugged unless it's got some sort of internal power, but tap-detection should be fairly robust. You'd probably want to have it remain in whatever secret-mode until unplugged, to stop spurious jolts from accidentally un/re-mounting it (unless you're really paranoid)
- RodgerTheGreat 15y agoThe inherent problem with rythm-based security is that everybody already knows shave-and-a-haircut. :)
- jrockway 15y agoA good passrhythm needs more than two bits of entropy.
- Zash 15y agoBut then you need a battery or something. How about switching to the secondary memory if you plug it in, pull it out and plug it in again? Then you might be able to get away with a small capacitor that would get charged on the first connection, and could activate secondary paths afterwards.
- wnight 15y agoDarkness is good... If someone was ransacking your apartment/work they'd need light. In places you wouldn't, like the server closets. A timeout would be good - like the backup drive won't appear until the lights have been off for six hours. Name the server 'mouse' or something appropriately timid.
- bajsejohannes 15y agoI really like this idea, as well as the others in this thread. One minor problem with them is that you would always see the usb hub, which is pretty weird for a mouse. It makes it go from completely invisible, to suspicious - granted that someone is looking very carefully. Of course, most monitors and keyboards these days are USB hubs, so sticking the secret drive in there wouldn't raise suspicion. Come to think of it, a keyboard is a great place to put it; you could enter a passphrase on the keyboard to unlock the hidden drive.