security - Secure USB Drive by creating 2 partitions one is read only

08
2014-07
  • Ronan Dejhero

    i have a Lexar 8GB flash drive and i want to protect it using some software i forgot it's name o anything about it ! .

    The software creates 2MB (i think) partition on the drive and the rest of the drive becomes an encrypted partition (so physically the drives will have 2 partitions)

    the 2MB partition is READ ONLY and has one executable file , when when launched asks for a password and unlocks the 2nd partition after mounting it .

    does anybody know this software , or something similar ?

    • Answers
  • harrymc

    TrueCrypt is very secure disk encryption software.


    • Related Question

    security - How to create one additional hidden partition in a USB drive
  • backslash17

    For security purposes I need to locate a additional hidden partition on USB flash drive. The USB drive contains a security application that will check (in code) if the hidden partition exists. If not I will assume that the application is a non valid copy.

    Any ideas about it?

    There is already a programmed secure method to check if the USB drive is correct using the WMI Win32_drive class. The idea is to locate the drive info into the hidden partition and to check if it correct for anti-tampering procedures.


    • Related Answers
  • Michael Kohne

    The important thing to note is that 'hidden' doesn't really mean 'hidden'. It means 'hidden from the average Joe'. Anyone who can run fdisk will be able to see that there is a partition there, and might get curious as to what it's for.

    If your purpose is just to do application keying (it only runs with the special USB drive), then I'd suggest not creating a hidden partition, but instead making the main partition a few K short of the end of the USB drive. Then use the windows raw access APIs to directly access the USB drive and look for special data (that you will have already written) at the end of the physical device.

    This is slightly sneakier and slightly less noticeable than an extra partition. Unfortunately, it's still quite susceptible to whole-drive copying, and may not actually accomplish your goals.

    I suggest elaborating on what you actually want to do, and let us try to help you achieve that end result.

  • Jhonny D. Cano -Leftware-

    Mmm as an Idea, you can use TrueCrypt. It has a portable option for installing also, and you can create a hidden partition on a file

  • maxwellb

    It sounds like you are using this to support an application that you wish to deploy on a flash drive?

    This might be a question for stackoverflow, and the Windows API. You can create a partition through "gparted" for example, from a Linux LiveCD such as openSUSE. These tools allow you to specify a "partition type" of "hidden FAT".

    Once you have the second partition, there is probably an API to query the partition table, but I don't know of it, and if your application would need Administrative privileges to run.

    Even if the app did secure Admin privileges, is it likely or possible that a group policy at large (think domain accounts) may be preventing access to the partition table?