USB Stick with Password under Linux

[Jeffrey F. Bloss]

Steve Jeppesen wrote:

> On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 10:41:48 +0300
> OOzy Pal wrote:
> 
> > Can some one recommend a USB stick that I can password protect under
> > Linux and Windows?
> > 
> 
> I just purchased a Kingston U3 DataTraveler 1 gig this past weekend
> and noticed it had a password/security function built into it -
> however I am unable to test it in either O.S. right now as it is at
> my place of business - and I'm not!
> 
> http://www.kingston.com/flash/datatraveler_home.asp

According to their white paper the encryption functions are
windows-only. The dual-mode DTS will work as a plain vanilla USB thumb
drive as long as you have a public "zone" set up, and the DTSP won't
work at all under Linux. To be precise the little compatibility table
says "Not Supported".

I'd say that and fact it's hardware encryption means this is because
the management/authentication program is windows only. You *might* get
wine or such to run it, but at that point you're screwing around so
much in my opinion that you're way better off using another thumb drive
and Truecrypt. It's almost certainly cheaper, and you can move the drive
between Win/*nix boxes as long as Truecrypt is installed on the box
(requires admin privledges which leaves some people out in the cold at
work, school, etc...)

Note: Truecrypt also has a "treveler mode", but I'm not familiar with
it so I don't know if it has the same limitations as the DTS/DTSP
drives above. I believe it also requires admin privledges to load its
driver on a host machine, so buyer be ware.

> When you plug it in, it mounts two drives, one "cd-rom" type and
> one for your data.  That's for M$ and Linux. I can live with that.
> 
> The "cd-rom" mount doesn't allow you to delete anything, like a normal
> cd-rom.  And according to the instructions, it comes with preloaded
> "apps" on the data mount that can be deleted if desired.

This is probably because of some partitioning scheme used to hold the
authentication application(s) and the data itself. Wild guess here, but
the "CD-ROM" mount is probably read-only because of some default
data-protecting NTFS mount. The "data" area of the drive is likely
formatted fat32 so it's mounts read/write.

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