file encryption for a thumb drive

[cobalt]

Hi all,

I like to keep some key information available in my GHB. I'd like to put more there on a thumb drive, but I'd like it encrypted.

I don't have the enterprise version of Windows, so I don't have bitlocker.

Ideally, I'd like something installed on the thumb drive (so the computer I use to view the files doesn't have to have it installed) and ideally be OS independent. Does such a thing exist, or is this a unicorn I'm looking for?

Thanks!

 

[vicorjh]

Yup, one is

http://www.ironkey.com/en-US/

 

[whatluck]

You want veracrypt. Portable on windows, on linux you'll need to compile.

 

[Chet0729]

Iron key works well.

Bit locker is useless, it can be defeated in about 5 minutes.
Depending on what type of files some applications also can do one way hashes. The docx and xlsx versions of office have much better encryption than previous versions.

 

[cobalt]

thanks all, I'll check out ironkey.

shame about bitlocker...

 

[bfm]

A lot of it comes down to key storage. This is at least as important as the encryption level. The best encryption is useless if the key can be found.

 

[BenDover]

Cheap and dirty way is to use a compression program like 7zip and add all your files to an encrypted zip file. It supports AES256 encryption and others too. Just be sure to do the compression/encryption on another disk or wipe your thumb drive.

 

[FrugalFannie]

Who controls the encryption/decryption ability with ironkey? If the interwebs are down, can you access your info? Veracrypt can be on the drive so you can access it from any computer.

 

[napoleon1815]

http://www.cp-lab.com/filecrypt/

It will install a portable version of the software on a thumb drive that you can use to encrypt files and folders...uses 448-bit Blowfish.

 

[Editor]

Who controls the encryption/decryption ability with ironkey?

Provided it is the "personal" version of IronKey, keys are generated and managed on the device itself. I've never used a managed IronKey so can't factually speak to that, but key management then may well be elsewhere on a server.

 

[Maui5150]

I take a little bigger approach, and I have a physical hard drive I easily can add or remove from my machine. Especially with SSDs, easy to hide, pretty safe, very quick to back up.

The caution I have with thumb drives, replace them every year or two, even if you think they are fine. Failures on these are extremely hard to recover, and even if you have two thumb drives you bought at the same time, they can have different internals. Learned my lesson the hard way and even sending into some data recovery places, with what I thought was the exact same thumb drive to do a physical chip for chip swap, the boards and internals were slightly different and it was unrecoverable

 

[namedpipes]

My rule of thumb is, who are you concerned about?

If you want to keep your survivors from finding your porn stash after you... you know... then almost anything will do, including a passworded zip file, an encrypted directory on your hard drive, etc.

If you want to preserve business secrets, spend the cash and use real hard drives and buy a decent encryption tool. You can write it off anyway.

NSA after you? They're going to find what they want and even if not they'll just plant it and you're cooked.

If it's NES you're guarding against, it's too late. Check out the thread in Off Topic for the vidcaps from your kitchen. BTW, who puts KETCHUP on bananas?!

(Maui speaks the truth. Don't DEPEND on thumb drives)

 

[inerlogic]

i encrypt with GPG and leave the files on my Google Drive, a thumb drive and WD Passport..... not sure if there's a portable app for GPG, but there are enough of them out there for various OSes.... i can access my files on win 7 & 10, OSX and Linux

 

[noxin]

I take a little bigger approach, and I have a physical hard drive I easily can add or remove from my machine. Especially with SSDs, easy to hide, pretty safe, very quick to back up.

The caution I have with thumb drives, replace them every year or two, even if you think they are fine. Failures on these are extremely hard to recover, and even if you have two thumb drives you bought at the same time, they can have different internals. Learned my lesson the hard way and even sending into some data recovery places, with what I thought was the exact same thumb drive to do a physical chip for chip swap, the boards and internals were slightly different and it was unrecoverable

A former co-worker experienced a similar issue with a thumb drive that he was writing to his young children on. He lost about a year's worth of entries and was devastated over it.

Multiple copies, multiple media, multiple locations. Physical redundancy.

 

[drgrant]

Kingston DT2000. No siftware bullshit, **** that noise. Only downer is you probably have to charge it once in awhile. (its designed to be unlocked before being inserted in a machine)

 

[Pinion]

I use DCCExplorer on the USB drive I keep on my keychain to encrypt my files.

 

[Knuckle Dragger]

What about a hardware solution?

http://www.apricorn.com/products/ha...ck-usb3.html?gclid=CO3448TAks8CFYVkhgodOuwO2g

Thumb drive:

http://www.apricorn.com/products/hardware-encrypted-drives/aegis-secure-key-3-0.html

 

[FrugalFannie]

A former co-worker experienced a similar issue with a thumb drive that he was writing to his young children on. He lost about a year's worth of entries and was devastated over it.

Multiple copies, multiple media, multiple locations. Physical redundancy.

I watched a few months ago something about how long certain media will last and basically todays digital media storage devices are very short term. Think less than 5 years and this includes most hard drives. Whereas things like floppy disks, and magnetic tape, and other old school stuff actually lasts longer. I believe microfiche may be the most dependable (although not secure) mode of storage.

 

[cockpitbob]

I watched a few months ago something about how long certain media will last and basically todays digital media storage devices are very short term. Think less than 5 years and this includes most hard drives. Whereas things like floppy disks, and magnetic tape, and other old school stuff actually lasts longer. I believe microfiche may be the most dependable (although not secure) mode of storage.

The last I looked into it, even R/W DVDs were only good for a few years unless you bought the long-life ones that were supposed to have a 10year life.

At first I though hard drives would have an unlimited life because it's just magnetic domains on a disk, like floppies, but smaller. However the drive's electronics as Flash memory that has a limited life span, so that may be why drives have limited life expectancies.

Every few months I back up all my home machines on a USB disk that I keep in a safe deposit box. So if the house burns to the ground I don't loose everything. This made me think I need to ensure I replace it every 5 years, but then I realized I've had to replace my safe deposit box drive with a larger one more often than every 5 years because the damned thing keeps filling up. In a few years the kids will be out of the house and maybe I'll quit filling my off site drive and have to pay attention to its age.

 

[drgrant]

I watched a few months ago something about how long certain media will last and basically todays digital media storage devices are very short term. Think less than 5 years and this includes most hard drives. Whereas things like floppy disks, and magnetic tape, and other old school stuff actually lasts longer. I believe microfiche may be the most dependable (although not secure) mode of storage.

That's a bunch of crap, IMHO. I have hard disks in my basement right now that are 10+ years old, I guarantee I could go down there, fire one up, and retrieve whatever data is on it off the drive. Of course with HDDs you have to have redundancy because of mechanical failures, etc. I also have an ancient 256M Sony USB thumb drive in my desk. The case is half broken but if I stuck it in a computer it would read and write just fine.

-Mike

 

[drgrant]

The last I looked into it, even R/W DVDs were only good for a few years unless you bought the long-life ones that were supposed to have a 10year life.

At first I though hard drives would have an unlimited life because it's just magnetic domains on a disk, like floppies, but smaller. However the drive's electronics as Flash memory that has a limited life span, so that may be why drives have limited life expectancies.

Hard disks will last a long ass time if they're not subjected to shock (dropping), temperature/humidity extremes. a 5 year replacement interval on a couple HDDs that rarely get used is silly. About the only reason you would have to
replace such drives is because whatever interconnection interface they have might eventually change. What I would probably do is encrypt an archive, throw it on some cloud service (say amazon cloud or whatever) and keep a disk in a safe deposit box, etc.

-Mike

 

[cockpitbob]

What I would probably do is encrypt an archive, throw it on some cloud service (say amazon cloud or whatever) and keep a disk in a safe deposit box, etc.
-Mike

You're OK with stuff in the cloud if encrypted? Maybe I'll relax a bit about cloud storage. I've got nothing in the cloud.

 

[straightshooterjake]

If you encrypt things locally and then store the encrypted data in the cloud, then your only security concern is with your encryption software. If your software is trustworthy, then using the cloud for storage is a fine and recommended practice.

Trusting the encryption provided by a cloud provider is a whole different story. It may be strong, but you need to know exactly how the whole setup works.

 

[namedpipes]

You're OK with stuff in the cloud if encrypted? Maybe I'll relax a bit about cloud storage. I've got nothing in the cloud.

I keep all my nude selfies there. Amidst them are my real files renamed to look like more selfies. I figure a hacker would look at the first picture or two, decide the rest were the same offal and move on to greener pastures.

 

[drgrant]

You're OK with stuff in the cloud if encrypted? Maybe I'll relax a bit about cloud storage. I've got nothing in the cloud.

Yup, I'll probably get flamed for it, but I throw disk images up there with winrar file encryption, which while probably not impenetrable, is good enough to keep most annoying skript kiddies out. Obviously if you want to increase the security you can use other products to do so. I have 5TB of crap sitting in amazon cloud... $60/yr.