alt Hacker NewsDoes anyone actually trust these products? Always seemed like a terrible idea to me. The correct solution is to use free software cryptography on top of these things.
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I've been required to use similar products due to government regulations. Personally I never trusted them, and I would have loved to take 15 minutes poking around in them, but it was the government who mandated their use for their data so ultimately it was out of my hands.
These kinds of product are great for disaster recovery. E.g. your day to day use is software encrypted with a key bound to a TPM and stored in a central crypto store that verifies devices state before giving it out etc etc but then what do you do when all that shit breaks? Having the root key material on a hardware encrypted device on a safe is a great way to be able to restore from failures.
The overwhelming majority of people who use USB sticks for things are likely aware of security and the concept of encryption. But the idea of being able to use “free software cryptography on top” may as well be a trip to Mars.
>The correct solution is to use free software cryptography on top of these things.
If implemented correctly, "hardware" encryption can be more secure than "free software cryptography". The most obvious benefit is protection against brute-attacks, which you can't meaningfully implement with software. Not to mention added protection of biometric authentication as a second factor, compared to typing a password into a possibly untrusted machine.
We have to use the ones that cost 8x more than regular ones and are certified by something that our industry approves.
There's a guy with some Bitcoin that knows about a model, I'd trust that one.
The ironkey at least has reasonable independent evaluations.
Software is insecure in many scenarios because endpoint security is abysmal. Of course, a USB stick with fingerprint reader cannot be secure but there is no way around hardware-based cryptography with independent key entry if you need real security. Then again, this won't help you if the secrets are transferred to the insecure endpoint anyway.
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We used these: https://apricorn.com/aegis-padlock-usb3
They work well in high security environments because you can allowlist the vendor and product id of only these hard drives, and you don't have to set up procedures where people HAVE to encrypt their drives before use.
So cost-wise it makes sense.
But for personal use? BitLocker / VeraCrypt all the way.