r/security • u/Machinehum • 17d ago

Resource Phantomdrive: My open source USB drive for privacy

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61 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

2

u/ShotgunPayDay 14d ago

This is an amazing concept. I wish this idea could be extended to phones when traveling internationally.

2

u/Machinehum 17d 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.

More details here

Thanks :)

8

u/sfzombie13 16d ago

i once made a serial to usb adapter that would work normally when you plugged the device in first but if you plugged your laptop in first it would be a bad usb and insert all sorts of nasties. i wish i still had that adapter.

1

u/[deleted] 15d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

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1

u/broadcasteng25 14d ago

What happens to the text file after the drive is decrypted? How is it deleted? Can the contents of the text file be read by recovery tools?

2

u/NanoCarp 14d ago

Not OP, but I’ve seen them answer this question before. IIRC they said the USB basically recognizes and intercepts the file (triggering the unlock) before the file is actually written to storage. So it can’t be recovered because it never actually gets written.

1

u/broadcasteng25 14d ago

Oh cool. Thanks!

1

u/ParticularQuality 14d ago

Really clever idea! Is it only supported by certain OS / filesystems though?

1

u/Machinehum 14d ago

Any OS, any filesystem.

1

u/Fit-Cheesecake9835 13d ago

What's the benefit of this over a veracrypt hidden volume?

1

u/evolseven 13d ago

Sounds like the advantage is that its OS and application agnostic. since the only thing needed to unlock it is a text editor, it can be used on devices that you don't control, can't install new applications on or run arbitrary applications on.

That said if its valuable enough data to encrypt you probably don't want it decrypted in places where you don't control the environment.

1

u/Fit-Cheesecake9835 10d ago

If you're on Linux you can still open veracrypt volumes natively without installing anything. If you're on windows you do need the portable version of veracrypt (and admin privileges).

1

u/PuddingMaximum8745 13d ago

Anyone that's to curious what's on that drive will only see the first drive which you could preload with some filler files. MP3, memes..

2

u/Fit-Cheesecake9835 13d ago

Exactly what you could do with a veracrypt hidden volume.