Secure USB Memory – Don’t Be Scammed
You wouldn’t think secure USB memory sticks would remind me of a song, but then you wouldn’t think that if you knew me either. EVERYTHING reminds me of a song. (If only I could remember more important things..)
If I were writing to Elvis fans, I might have used the expression “Don’t Be Fooled”. But since I’m not sure of the age of my audience, some of you may not even know who “the king” was. In addition, the internet seems to love the word scam – so that’s what I used.
Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram had an interesting note about a secure USB memory drive called Secustick. Secustick promised not only unbeatable security for your data, but also that too many incorrect password attempts would automatically wipe out the data. In fact, the company claimed a lot of things, including adoption by the French Intelligence Service.
Unfortunately, Bruce points out that all claims were bogus. Tweakers.net not only broke its security, but found that the data was NOT encrypted at all, nor was there any “erase feature”. Troubling to say the least.
So what does that mean? It means that more than ever you have to learn what vendors you can trust and to what extent. It means sometimes paying for a product instead of going for what is either cheap or free.
And while you certainly can encrypt data yourself on any USB flash drive, memory stick, call it what you will tiny memory device; some people prefer convenience and avoid hassle and learning curves at all costs.
If you choose to encrypt it yourself, Bruce uses PGPDisk. Steve Gibson of GRC, a HIGHLY respected tech guy, has promoted the free TrueCrypt software. What I would like to know is if either is impervious to government cracking (in reasonable periods of time – NO encryption will stand if given enough time [over which time computing power increases and makes the cracking easier]).
If you are one who enjoys convenience and will pay a few dollars for it, Kingston – a well respected memory company – offers their DataTraveler Secure series in various sizes. Kingston uses the venerable AES 256 encryption.
