USB "thumbdrives" with fingerprint detection
Benjamin Scott
dragonhawk at iname.com
Sun May 8 21:49:01 EDT 2005
On May 8 at 6:39pm, Bruce Dawson wrote:
> Does anyone know if Linux supports these?
While I haven't looked into these, I've come across the occasional review,
store display, etc. They've all appeared to be nothing more then a standard
USB combo device, with the sub-devices being a standard flash drive and a
finger-print reader. The drive comes pre-loaded with an installer for some
Windoze software which, presumably/hopefully, does something with the
finger-print reader to protect data on the drive.
> Also, does anyone know what mechanism is used? I can think of 2:
>
> * Fingerprint is used to encrypt/decrypt data on the drive.
> * Fingerprint is used to allow access to the drive (and nothing on
> the drive is encrypted).
And a third: Fingerprint is used to cipher a key stored on the drive, and
that key is then used to cipher the data. This would really be the preferred
method, as it allows the option of multiple fingers/people using the same
drive. I would hate to loose my data just because I scarred my finger tip.
> Obviously, the former is desired, but I can think of lots of Trade
> Restrictions it would interfere with.
More importantly, as Bruce Schneider aptly observed, it is a lot easier and
cheaper to just sell snake oil that claims to be secure then it is to actually
make something secure; at the same time, "apparently secure" and "secure" are
generally indistinguishable without a detailed investigation.
--
Ben <dragonhawk at iname.com>
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