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What are your thoughts on USB storage drives that have keypad encryption?

It seems like the benefits are having the device lock/wipe itself after a set amount of attempts in case of a brute force attack and not having to run software to decrypt the drive on the device you plug it into.

I included a picture of the IronKey Keypad 200 but that's just because it's the first result that came up when I was looking for an example. There seem to be a few other manufacturers and models out there and they probably have different features.

I am curious what do you think of them? Do you think they are useful? Do you find it more a novelty?

It was an ExplainingComputers video titled Very Useful Small Computing Things that made me think of them.

NabeGewell ,
@NabeGewell@lemmy.world avatar

I wouldn't trust any part of its hardware and software to store anything worth encrypting on it

makeasnek ,
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

Hardware signing devices have lots of utility because they keep the key from ever being on the machine (which is more likely to be compomised). Think ledger or trezor for your Bitcoin. Hardware encryption devices are just really expensive and black-box ways to avoid Veracrypt.

If your encryption algorithm is secure, you have no use for automatic lock-out. If it's not, automatic lockout won't do much against an attacker with physical access to the device. Unless they are dumb enough to trigger the lockout AND the internal memory wipes itself sufficiently well AND/OR the attacker doesn't have the resources to reverse engineer the device.

kevincox ,
@kevincox@lemmy.ml avatar

If your encryption algorithm is secure, you have no use for automatic lock-out.

This isn't true. You need your algorithm and your key to be secure. If the key needs to be remembered or entered often it probably can't be secure. So brute force protection becomes very important.

If it’s not, automatic lockout won’t do much against an attacker with physical access to the device.

This isn't true. Yes, with enough time and effort it is possible to extract any data from any device. But in practice physical HSMs do an excellent job at raising the cost of key extraction. I would much rather have an attacker steal my Yubikey than a USB with my GPG key lying on it.

montar ,

I see one use-case, If you're going w/ sth illegal as hell to a place where you might get arrested and searched for just being there i.e a protest, nuking your (illegal) data might save your ass.

GolfNovemberUniform ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

Too expensive. Use software encryption instead

ryannathans ,

Nice just look at the most worn buttons

WarmSoda ,

Damn. Dude just comes in and ends the entire discussion.

CorrodedCranium OP , (edited )
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

It seems like these drives can use up to 15 digit pins and lock out after a set number of attempts. I don't know if that would be a huge issue

ninpnin ,

Permutations have entered the chat

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

It still drastically narrows down the search space and makes social engineering a LOT easier.

Because you tend to have one of two sources for any password that people need to remember.

  1. Randomly generated with no rhyme or reason. And written down on a sticky note as a result
  2. Something with meaning to the user

And it is the latter where this becomes an issue. Because let's say they are a 50 year old and 1, 4, 6, 7, and 9 are heavily worn. Well, they were born in the 70s so let's verify exactly when. Hmm, May. No 5 means it probably isn't their birthday. Wait... their partner was born on April 7th, 1976. No luck. Oh, but what if they were clever and it is actually 197647 instead of 471976? Boom, in.

CorrodedCranium OP , (edited )
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Related XKCD

https://leminal.space/pictrs/image/78609103-00d3-44ce-95a5-e8ba6ccba7ae.png

It's a shame more people don't think of obscure numbers they've been forced to remember in the past or see constantly and use those.

  • A number from a song

  • Your middle school locker combination

  • The number of a local pizza place

  • Your library card number

  • The barcode number on something you carry around all the time

If you combined any two of those I imagine it would make for a pretty secure password.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

No. That xkcd (not loading but I assume it is the password one?) is not relevant. Because you can't make a meaningful and easy to remember mnemonic out of a numeric password. That is WHY a purely numeric password is bad for anything that needs security. They are great for 2fa but the unique key should still be the other device.

And all of your good codes are similarly easy to social engineer out, are screwed the moment it is compromised once, or are literally reading off a sticky note.

Which gets back to these kinds of devices largely being security theatre. Because there is no good use case for them that wouldn't also involve encrypting the data/volume after you pin in. At which point... why waste money on something conspicuous with an easy to crack code?

CorrodedCranium OP ,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

I included it because passwords don't need to be hard to remember. If they make sense to you and have a bit of thought behind them they can be just as secure.

I am not saying these codes are perfect but if they are the weakest link in your network of security it's a decent start. Someone could be trying to get your passcode for days but unless they see you checking something like the bar code of a notebook before you have it memorized they could spend months guessing before realizing a segment of your passcode is the number of a pizza place in your hometown. It's not exactly something that's going to come up naturally.

I mentioned it in another comment but they also lock you out after a set number of attempts preventing brute force attacks.

I am not saying they aren't overpriced for what you are getting ($100 for 8GB) and considering the other options that are available but I doubt they are significantly easier to crack than a smartphone

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

Look up how hard it is for humans to remember long strings of numbers. That is WHY ICQ (and eventually phone numbers) were dropped almost immediately in favor of social media and the ability to exchange numbers just by tapping phones.

And in the time it would take to memorize a bar code (12-ish digits, depending on standard) you likely should be rotating that password anyway. And in the time it would take to memorize it you are also very blatantly reading off a sticky note as you "discretely" look at your notebook every time you want to access your password database in public. And if you aren't in public? Why go through these extra steps when there are much better ways to secure this that are a lot more obvious if they are tampered with.

I get that a youtuber you like talked about this. Youtubers talk about a lot of stupid products in the interest of making Content. But maybe listen to the people who have experience with this kind of hardware and the kind of security theatre policies that make them "a good idea".

CorrodedCranium OP , (edited )
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

I get that a youtuber you like talked about this. Youtubers talk about a lot of stupid products in the interest of making Content. But maybe listen to the people who have experience with this kind of hardware and the kind of security theatre policies that make them "a good idea".

I think you might be confused. I'm not saying these devices are good. I started the post by asking if people thought they were a novelty. I just don't think it's as black and white as you are making it out to be and we got off on a tangent about passwords.

I think often enough people have a few numbers memorized that they can use and a lot of the time they're going to be too obscure to social engineer. I don't think you could do some CSI Miami style deduction to easily find out a passcode that's over ten digits in length.

I will admit you could probably brute force it and it's going to take less time than an alpha numeric password.

wreckedcarzz ,
@wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world avatar

a number from a song

I've got it! 8, 6, 7, 5, 3, 0, 9. Bulletproof, thanks op!

CorrodedCranium OP ,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

That's why I said to combine it with something else. Jenny's number might be in a dictionary that is used in a brute force attack but hopefully something like your middle school locker combination isn't. It's still 7 extra bits of entropy.

wreckedcarzz ,
@wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world avatar

(yeah yeah but that's not funny so I ignored it :p)

Preflight_Tomato ,

Password Entropy = length * log2(possible_chars). So this would actually add 7*log2(10) => 23 bits of entropy, assuming the attacker knew that this section was numeric, or ~45 bits if they didn't.

For anyone curious: Current best practice is a minimum of 100 bits, or 16 characters assuming only letters, numbers, and special characters. The recommended minimum bits increases every year with computing power.

CorrodedCranium OP ,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Whoops thanks for the correction

fidodo ,

Just press the rest of the keys after you unlock it. Or use all the keys in the password. Or purposefully scuff them up.

leraje ,
@leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

I have one as a 'last resort' option. It's got backups of BitWarden, Aegis and Standard Notes and is only connected to my machine during backups.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Do encryption in software. History taught us hard lessons about this.

CorrodedCranium OP , (edited )
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Can you think of some notable examples of hardware based encryption failing?

Besides the actual device dying I mean

jwt ,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=beMtNM7nwfQ&t=35m

Lojcs ,

There's no password involved in that demo

jwt ,

That wasn't part of the assignment. ;)

kevincox ,
@kevincox@lemmy.ml avatar

The downside with doing encryption in software is that you can't limit attempts. If you are using a high-entropy key this is fine. But getting users to use high-entropy keys has problems. If there is an HSM integrated into the device you can limit the potential guesses before the key is wiped which is critical without high-entropy keys.

A blog I follow recently had a good post about this: https://words.filippo.io/dispatches/secure-elements/

Of course you are still better off with a high-entropy key and software. But if you trade off too much usability in the name of security you will likely find that your users/employees just work around the security.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Sure you can. Use a memory hard hashing algo

kevincox ,
@kevincox@lemmy.ml avatar

That mitigates the problem but doesn't solve it. If you want unlocking to be <1s and your adversary has 10k times the RAM and can take a month they can make 26 billion guesses. So unless your password is fairly high entropy it is at risk. Especially if they have more resources or more time. PINs are definitely out of the question, and simple passwords too.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Good passwords are important. Always.

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Couldn't the data be cloned and cracked off device without having to worry about the pin code?

catloaf ,

Yes, but it's meant to be difficult to do. Encryption algorithms are designed and chosen to be expensive to crack, so that you'd need NSA-level clusters to find the key in our lifetime.

I don't know if you could attack the encryption controller itself to brute-force the PIN to release the key. I assume in theory it's possible, but unless you're a very desirable target, they probably won't spend the effort, and attack something weaker. Like your cell phone, or your kneecaps.

ryannathans ,

If they did it right it'd not store the key, but instead use something like PBKDF2

SheeEttin ,

Overkill and overpriced. If you're on Windows, bitlocker is enough. If you're on Linux, LUKS is enough.

I've used Apricorn drives at previous jobs. They're cool and very much fit for purpose, but I'd have a hard time justifying the significant price premium when software is nearly as good, free, and works with any drive.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Eh, I wouldn't trust a US company (that can be served an NSL and is obligated to install backdoors) to do your FDE.

For windows, veracrypt is safer than bitlocker

CorrodedCranium OP ,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Is possible to veracrypt an entire Windows install?

ares35 ,
@ares35@kbin.social avatar

system disk encryption is possible, yes.

CorrodedCranium OP ,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Huh I'll have to try it sometime

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Yes

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Bitlocker shouldn't be considered secure as it is a Windows only encryption that is a black box for the most part. Additionally your decryption keys are send to Microsoft

CorrodedCranium OP ,
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

That seems to be the consensus. Would be significantly overkill and more of a neat novelty for a local backup of my taxes that's just going to sit on my desk.

Gooey0210 ,

Looks find to me, depending on your use case, everything would have a use case

Many people mention airport red flags and checks, for me I never had any issues with the airport stuff, except one time in China when I had a full case of wires, really 10kg of wires, and they just asked me me to open and show, np

CosmicApe ,
@CosmicApe@kbin.social avatar

Why did you have a 10kg bag of wires?

BeMoreCareful ,

What, do you work at a Chinese airport or something?

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

1000001897

CosmicApe ,
@CosmicApe@kbin.social avatar

I'm the one asking questions here!

GBU_28 ,

What's your spaghetti policy here

FooBarrington ,

You said I'd be conducting the interview when I walked in here. Now, exactly how much pot did you smoke?

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

What do you buy when you're in China. Dude wanted cheap wires. Let him have his cheap wires.

Gooey0210 ,

There's nothing else to buy if you're in China!

Only except for cheaper original shoes, where i'm right now it's really hard to find original and cheap puma seude

Gooey0210 ,

I like wires! Who doesn't like wires??

I donct have much stuff, but i have a lot of electronics, and at that moment i was very into sdr, so, wires, antennas, adapters, antennas, wires, and also additional hdmis, vgas, ethernet cables, usb, chargers, etc, etc, etc

CosmicApe ,
@CosmicApe@kbin.social avatar

Fair, I do like wires

VonReposti ,

Farnsworth, is that you?

Gooey0210 ,

Exactly!

roguetrick ,

It's very hard to actually secure something someone has physical access to and that can be disassembled.

CorrodedCranium OP , (edited )
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

Yeah. It does add another layer of security but if someone has the resources and motivation to get into an encrypted file or folder I suppose they could probably find a way around the hardware aspect. A bit of a niche use case.

I'm not sure how difficult it would be to get around the hardware aspect though especially with the higher end versions of these drives.

catloaf ,

Mere disassembly doesn't get you the date. Even if you read the chip directly, it would still be encrypted.

ctr1 ,
@ctr1@fl0w.cc avatar

I have this device and use it to store my keepassxc and onlykey backups, and it's useful to me because I've stopped using passwords (I only need to remember the pins for these devices which can unlock my keepass dbs that have everything else).

It seems secure enough for my use case, especially since the files I store in it are themselves encrypted (the onlykey backup still requires a pin), but I still want them to be difficult to access.

I've had to rely on it before but only because I didn't prepare a backup onlykey ahead of time- ideally it should be one of many recovery methods. But so far it's worked great for me.

Chefdano3 ,
@Chefdano3@lemm.ee avatar

One thing I can tell you, it's that you can't use them as bootable drives to install an OS from. And if you try to pass the USB connection from an ESXi host to a VM on it, it won't work.

Aside from that, they're really annoying to work with.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

Didn't use ironkey specifically but you can totally boot from an apricorn. Basically involved plugging it in, rebooting the machine, and VERY rapidly entering the unlock code before the bios finishes starting up and gets to the "so which drives are bootable?" phase.

It was hellish but it was also corporate policy to not use any USB storage devices that did not have a keypad for encryption. And DVDs were strongly controlled by the IT department (who were about as stupid as you would expect to have signed off on a policy like that).

EuphoricSquirrel ,

If you are lucky enough to know the admin key for the apricorn drives you can put them in lock override mode which keeps it unlocked till it completely loses power off the USB bus

Chefdano3 ,
@Chefdano3@lemm.ee avatar

Ah it was easy enough to get the iron key unlocked during post, as those HP servers take forever to boot, problem was the bios couldn't recognize the USB. Whatever firmware is on it that does the security confused the system, and while it saw the drive, it didn't know what it was and wouldn't boot from it. In both uefi mode, and in legacy bios mode

PowerCrazy ,

I have a USB drive with a keypad on it, it stores my FIPS Compliant SSH-key for IL-5 government systems. I unlock it to add my key into my ssh-agent, and don't use it for anything else. Though it is an 8gig USB stick, so I could in theory run some kind of security/pen testing flavor of linux plus a VPN Client to connect to said systems.

constantokra ,

Is there a specific benefit to that over something like a security key with a keypad, or even just a passphrase?

PowerCrazy ,

The government is slow, so using a yubikey isn't authorized, but the datasur pro is, and the private key does have a passphrase.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

What is your use case for this?

  • Confidential files in a public setting? Don't fucking bring confidential files to a public setting. But if you must, a big bulky laptop with (good) FDE is a lot more sequre than a flash drive someone can pickpocket.
  • Border crossing? Guess what? You paint a MASSIVE red flag on your back and get to learn that you don't actually have all that many rights in the time between stepping on foreign soil and being admitted by customs. Congrats, you gave them the wrong code three times and it got wiped. They are going to break your face and put you in a black site.
  • Hiding sensitive/highly illegal content in the event of a police investigation: Yeah... if you are at the point where there is a warrant (or black van) out for your arrest than it really doesn't matter if they can see whatever you were looking at last night.

At my old job we required these for "thumb drives" and all they ever did was make reformatting machines pure hell.

CorrodedCranium OP , (edited )
@CorrodedCranium@leminal.space avatar

What is your use case for this?

In the ExplainingComputer's video he was using it to store his passwords. I'm not sure if he was doing it in conjunction with something like an encrypted password database or a plain text file.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

So it is confidential files in a public setting.

This is a solved problem that doesn't involve a small overly expensive flash drive that requires very blatant operation to unlock when needed.

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