Corsair USB Padlock 2 Has 256-bit AES, Keypad

wow thats a good price for that level of security. I have a 16gb corsair like this one pictured and the chip came out of the rubber casing it seems to have been poorly glued to the rubber casing....

What in the Heck would you ever put on a thumb drive that you would need to secure it ???? WTF

^
Government Whistler blower data out of the Federal buildings? LOL I honestly have no idea buts is still pretty cool

Really? You asked that? You mean to tell me you don't see the worth of being able to move information off of a hackable platform and onto a media that is guaranteed to be only accessible via password?

Really?... Come on now...

I don't see the point of 'securing' these flashdrives. If someone wants to see your private data they'll find a way to somehow. I mean c'mon...if someone has possession of your drive it's only a matter of time before they get what they want. If you want to keep sensitive data find a proprietary method of storing it. Use a 5 1/4 inch floppy. That'll show em'

I respectfully disagree: there is a reason why the nuke launch codes were never stolen!

I don't follow you...Which nuke codes? Did anyone have them on their person? What's your argument? Just trying to understand where you're coming from. Please elaborate.

u won't say that if u plan to transfer sensitive materials (interpret it however u want ), and lost the drive.

i don't know how nuke codes are stored...but from my out-dated knowledge of AES, it's practically unbreakable (takes a ridiculous amount of time/tries to crack to be feasible) with computer equipments affordable to most people today.

But can't you just take the memory chip out and read it manually by soldering it on another circuit board? Hmm.

Is it USB 3.0? And 8 GB is sort of low. 16 and 32 GB variants would be nice.

I hope the price drops quickly

Not that I have anything to hide, it's the priniciple of the matter.
256 bit is a joke, 1024 would be more appropriate. I am sure there is some hidden FED law or regulation stopping any thing higher to make sure they (the government) can easily break in when ever they want. Just say no to big brother.
Luckily you can download free encryption tools at this time and do not need this.

If data written to the memory chips are encrypted with AES, then you wouldn't be able to read the original data by soldering it to another circuit. You would see data, just not data that made any sense to you.

@Regulas
If 256 bit is a joke, please feel free to crack it. If the government is able to crack it, why would 256 be enough for top secret information?

With the plethora of malware that likes to write to removable media there is certainly an advantage on lockable and encrypted media. These are especially handy in public computing environments like schools, libraries etc.

By that reasoning why bother locking up your house or car? Why not just throw everything you own out on the lawn for people to come by and freely take? If they want it theyll get it anyway right?

Re: the 'nuclear codes'.

The US Strategic Air Command didn't like that they couldn't launch without authorization, so until 1977 the lockout codes on the missiles were set to *all zeros*: OOOOOOOO

I suspect rick2689 was pointing out that no amount of encryption security can overcome the ability of fools to use bad passwords.

1) Password is limited to digits. Unless it wipes after X amount of tries you don't need to break AES, you need to automate password entry.
2) They say it's secure if the drive is disassembled, but the password and AES key both need to live somewhere in it. It might be hard to hack, but I'm sure it's hackable through disassembly.

3) That said, for 60$ it offers a reasonable amount of protection; just depends who you're trying to hide what from.

Sounds good for me with that kind of security , and it will go down in price soon enough anyway. =)

In theory yes (see TPM hacked: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/2010020 [...] ip_cracked ). However, the cost of doing this is huge. That's why if some thing like this also needs software based encryption like TrueCrypt.

Using 256-bit AES on this device is a nice marketing ploy, but absolutely pointless because you're only going to be using a short, weak pass-code which will seriously limit the strength of the encryption. You would have to enter about an 85 DIGIT RANDOM PASSCODE to take full advantage of 256-bit AES! Any encryption, no matter how "strong", is weak if you use a weak key. That doesn't mean this thing is completely useless, but it is only going to protect your data from your nosy computer-illiterate co-workers or an average Joe who finds your lost USB drive.

Just about anybody who knows what they're doing and has the right tools, including some "hackers", most police forensics departments, and most definitely the three-letter government agencies, are going to be able to crack your puny passcode in a matter of SECONDS, if it even takes that long.

Roland: One.
Dark Helmet: One.
Colonel Sandurz: One.
Roland: Two.
Dark Helmet: Two.
Colonel Sandurz: Two.
Roland: Three.
Dark Helmet: Three.
Colonel Sandurz: Three.
Roland: Four.
Dark Helmet: Four.
Colonel Sandurz: Four.
Roland: Five.
Dark Helmet: Five.
Colonel Sandurz: Five.
Dark Helmet: So the combination is... one, two, three, four, five? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!

I use Ironkeys flash drives. They can't be beat in terms of security.

No, that's not how good encryption works. I'm not endorsing this USB stick as "good", it may or may not be, I don't know... The password is used to generate the much larger (256-bit in this case) decryption key on the fly and then discarded. The password doesn't have to be stored anywhere but in your head, and the decryption key is also not stored and only used to decrypt the data while it is needed, then disappears when you're done with it. If you get the password wrong, then the generated decryption key will be wrong, and the end result will be "garbage" data. The ONLY way to know that the password was correct is that the decrypted data will be, well, decrypted (not garbage). Usually the software looks for some well-known data in the decrypted data and if it sees it, it knows the decryption key is correct, otherwise it asks you to try again.

Small nitpick: It'd be nice if they made it so that the cap could be attached when the drive is in use. I imagine a too-easily lost cap and that'd annoy me. ...otherwise pretty slick as long as the performance is good.

Its web site says "Protection: Your own 4-10 digit PIN....Multiple failed entries locks device for 2 minutes to prevent repeated attempts to access data" But there are only 5 buttons, so its really only a 4-10 digit combo of only 5 possible digit types. That's easier to crack than if all 10 digits were avail to make up the pin. It's really just to keep the folks that don't know or don't have (or can make) tools to automate including with the 2 min delay after the "Multiple failed entries" limit is exceeded. That's still a lot of folks that a device with these features protects against.

And for those folks that ask why this type of protection is needed, I'll just say, if you have to ask, then this type of product is not for you. However, there's a sizable market for portable but secure devices - and secure at all cost is not needed or wanted by most of the market I'm talking about. Lower cost with convenience features in most cases = a compromise in security at some level. These are always in some balance act where at one point one side out weighs the other for a specific market.

I thought they were set to 12345, which was the same as all the presidents' luggage during the same time period.

Yes, but their 2 minute lockout only applies if you want to use their unmodified hardware. If you pull the flash chips and copy off the encrypted data, or possibly modify the circuitry in the stick to remove the lockout protection, then you can work at finding the password without restrictions, which is as you pointed out, even easier with only 5^10 combinations to choose from. That is only equivalent to a 24-bit key, which even the little CPU in your smartphone could probably crack in a few seconds, but still better than most encryption you might want to do by pencil-and-paper, so maybe that's something good to say about it? :-)

Until Corsair improves the rubber housing for their poorly-built flash drives, $60 is a complete ripoff, even if it lets you encrypt shit. Hell, Apricorn sells higher capacity encrypted drives for a much better price.

Lots of people here are uninformed it seems.

1. You can't simply desolder the flash chips and read them elsewhere, since the data commited to the flash chips never goes to them unencrypted.

2. It does NOT come down to 10 billion combinations for an off-line brute force cracking, due to salting...

The Padlock 2 has a unique-per-drive pseudo random number (deterministic) hard coded at the factory at manufacture time and it also generates a non-deterministic "session" random number (hardware-generated non-pseudo) at time of PIN creation, to pad-out the remaining entropy that is required to fulfil the requirements needed to maximise the entropy for 256-bits. This is called salting and is a industry standard method for ensuring that key strength is maximal.

To prove this actually works, you can remove the PIN (using the 9-1-1 method) and then recreate with the exact same PIN and not get access to your previous data, because a new session random number was generated and you don't know the previous number (it's internal to the control chip).

3. To brute force these in 10 billion combinations, you need to leave the chips in the thumb drive and crack via the keypad. This could be automated but replacing the buttons with wires to a computer, however with the 2 minute lock-out, your grandchildren will have retired before it finishes.

4. The PIN number does NOT have to be stored in the unit and any half decent crypto implementation WILL NOT do so. A cryptographically secure hash could be used and typically is.

5. It is NOT limited to 5 digits on account of having 5 buttons. For 0 you press 0|1 once and for 1 you press 0|1 twice, just like a mobile phone.

If this device does what it claims (256-bit AES encryption in hardware with deterministic and non-deterministic salting), then it is an absolute bargain at the asking price.

The IronKey requires password entry via your systems keyboard, which can be keylogged. If someone keylogs your IronKey password, then it is worth their while to steal your IronKey. You might then feel an unfounded sense of safety, not realising that your IronKey has fallen into the hands of someone with its password!

The Padlock 2 does not suffer from the dangers of keylogging, as you enter the password via the inbuilt number pad. What's more, you can even unlock the Padlock 2 BEFORE you plug it into the computer (has a built in rechargable battery).

I have an 8GB IronKey S200 and 2 of these 8GB Corsair Padlock 2's. I much prefer the Corsair (it is completely system agnostic, so I can also use it with OpenBSD). If you were skeptical, you could also layer the security by using TrueCrypt on it also.