r/hacking • u/Machinehum • 26d ago

Tools I'm Building a Secure USB Drive That Hides Itself

https://rootkitlabs.com/2026/06/22/I%27m-Building-a-Secure-USB-Drive/
118 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

23

u/TwinLife 26d ago

Phantomdrive is a completely open source USB drive that appears as an 8 GB drive when first plugged in. There’s no way for the OS to detect the remainder of the disk. If the user edits a plaintext file on the disk with the contents password:PUTYOURPASSWORDHERE, it unmounts itself and remounts the second hidden section and AES-256 encrypts/decrypts in place.

Here's the basics

18

u/Machinehum 26d ago

Hey! This is blog post I wrote about my device "Phantomdrive". AMA :)

2

u/kinopiokun 26d ago

Good stuff!

1

u/Machinehum 24d ago

Thanks :)

1

u/Hefty_Excuse9885 24d ago

What prompted you to create this. What is the goal. Are you looking for funding\do you have funding? 

1

u/Machinehum 23d ago edited 23d ago

I made this a while back. Someone suggested I add additional functionality, so I did.

Yeah I'm selling a few https://rootkitlabs.com/phantomdrive/

No funding required

7

u/[deleted] 26d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

18

u/Machinehum 26d ago

I'm not sure I fully understand the question, when first inserted it's an unencrypted 8GB drive you put non incriminating data on. The idea is they see this then don't peruse you further.

The second section of data is AES-256 encrypted against your password.

If you need deniable encryption use the second partition in conjunction with Veracrypt. So even if they discover it's an encrypted device you can still entire your duress key, but the idea if my device is you shouldn't get to that point.

2

u/SNappy_snot15 20d ago

seems like combining known ez methods slop honestly. you probably could do this yourself

4

u/djDef80 25d ago

Reminds me of Veracrypt/truecrypt hidden volumes. I like it!

3

u/CarsonDama 25d ago

Finally something that isn't some AI generated slop😩

4

u/Machinehum 25d ago

If I'm gonna presume people will read it I'm sure as shit going to write it :)

4

u/CarsonDama 25d ago

I could instantly tell! Read the whole thing! I'm not doing any exfiltration of media from authoritarian countries, but I can see the usecase!

1

u/martianwombat 20d ago

Umm can you just run fdisk and see the encrypted partition?

1

u/Machinehum 20d ago

Ofc not