It seems like the benefits are having the device lock/wipe itself after a set amount of attempts in case of a brute force attack and not having to run software to decrypt the drive on the device you plug it into.

I included a picture of the IronKey Keypad 200 but that’s just because it’s the first result that came up when I was looking for an example. There seem to be a few other manufacturers and models out there and they probably have different features.

I am curious what do you think of them? Do you think they are useful? Do you find it more a novelty?

It was an ExplainingComputers video titled Very Useful Small Computing Things that made me think of them.

  • NuXCOM_90Percent
    72·
    9 months ago

    What is your use case for this?

    • Confidential files in a public setting? Don’t fucking bring confidential files to a public setting. But if you must, a big bulky laptop with (good) FDE is a lot more sequre than a flash drive someone can pickpocket.
    • Border crossing? Guess what? You paint a MASSIVE red flag on your back and get to learn that you don’t actually have all that many rights in the time between stepping on foreign soil and being admitted by customs. Congrats, you gave them the wrong code three times and it got wiped. They are going to break your face and put you in a black site.
    • Hiding sensitive/highly illegal content in the event of a police investigation: Yeah… if you are at the point where there is a warrant (or black van) out for your arrest than it really doesn’t matter if they can see whatever you were looking at last night.

    At my old job we required these for “thumb drives” and all they ever did was make reformatting machines pure hell.

    • Corroded@leminal.spaceOPEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      What is your use case for this?

      In the ExplainingComputer’s video he was using it to store his passwords. I’m not sure if he was doing it in conjunction with something like an encrypted password database or a plain text file.

      • NuXCOM_90Percent
        1·
        9 months ago

        So it is confidential files in a public setting.

        This is a solved problem that doesn’t involve a small overly expensive flash drive that requires very blatant operation to unlock when needed.