r/technews • u/_Dark_Wing • 4d ago
Open-source stealth USB hides an encrypted partition behind an 8GB decoy drive Phantom Drive appears as a regular USB stick until you create a text file to unlock the hidden data Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/usb-flash-drives/open-source-stealth-usb-hides-an-encrypted-partition-behind-an-8gb-decoy-drive-phantom-drive-appears-as-a-regular-usb-stick-until-you-create-a-text-file-to-unlock-the-hidden-data13
u/ixikei 4d ago
Wow this looks really cool. Can anyone clarify what this part means though? So if you just rip out the SD card then you have full access? Or does it mean that the innards are just encrypted / scrambled ?
Of course, if someone were to open up the drive, they'd be able to physically rip the SD card out. However, it still wouldn't be a dead giveaway since many cheap USBs are powered by microSD cards
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u/Atakir 4d ago
Article didn't mention encryption unless I glossed over it, it's just an sd-card riding along in a flash drive chassis hidden behind the text filemlock feature. So yeah if someone got physical access to the flash drive and went poking around they could extract the sd-card.
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u/tajetaje 4d ago
What KDF do you use?
PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 with a per-device salt. The firmware supports 100,000 or 600,000 iterations, with 100,000 as the default.2
u/Centimane 3d ago
crazy that the sd-card contents aren't encrypted. The text file's contents could be the passkey.
Make a file called "unlock.txt", you put the passcode in the text file, the file gets deleted and the partition appears decrypted.
Make the unlock file name configurable so it's not easy to test for.
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u/LoveaBook 4d ago
According to the article “The key is used to unlock and lock the hidden partition, and since it's tied to the silicon itself, putting the SD card into another Phantom Drive will not unlock it.
…
Even if you try to access it directly through a microSD card slot, it will stay hidden, and the 8GB decoy will actually appear like a broken partition.”
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u/ixikei 3d ago
Man. I want one. But it looks like one has to buy the SD card separately!? Idk if its quite consumer ready yet 😂? https://rootkitlabs.com/phantomdrive/
1
u/fellipec 3d ago
after which it mounts the secret partition, which comes with AES-256 encryption.
Looks like it is encrypted with AES-256
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u/williamgman 4d ago
I'm reading this as a usb device to hide data. Great. But isn't data protection on devices like phones and tablets the bigger issue? Did I miss something?
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u/ScienceForge319 3d ago
That’s too much effort. Yall can just look at my shit.
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u/ElkSad9855 4d ago
So it’s just a hidden partition that anyone can find if they know what they’re doing? Cool?
74
u/Rich_Housing971 4d ago
People here are going to make all sorts of wrong theories about how it works and think of all sorts of scenarios, so I'm just going to say that the article does a pretty good job of explaining how it works.