Secure thumbdrive hacks

May 8, 2008 2:41 AM

I have been given a Kingston Data Traveller Secure Privacy Edition thumbdrive for use at work. Is there any way of hacking it for use with OSX?

Our IT department claim that only these secure thumbdrives will be mountable on our work PCs from some unspecified date in the near future. Trouble is I have a MacBook, and need to transfer files back and forward to our work computers. Is there any way of hacking this thumbdrive to achieve this? I do not want to have to run XP on my MacBook.

posted by roofus to computers & internet (6 comments total)

I may be wrong, but I think that USB stick should mount fine under OSX - your IT guys likely mean that if you tried to use any other USB stick on their systems then they won't work, not that those USB sticks will only mount on your work systems. OSX should just see it as a normal volume on plugging it in. The encryption is probably password-based, unless it uses some kind of wacky client, so it'll just prompt you to enter your password.

All conjecture, but I doubt you'll need to install XP.
posted by Happy Dave at 5:43 AM on May 8, 2008

unless it uses some kind of wacky client

It almost certainly uses some kind of wacky client, if by "wacky" you mean a Windows application.

I don't think there's anything you can do with this unless they provide a Mac client. That said, I don't know how exactly they plan to enforce the use of these, since I'm not aware of any way to limit USB devices to allow some rather than others. Also, you may be able to simly delete the encrypted partition entirely and create an unencrypted partition.
posted by me & my monkey at 6:45 AM on May 8, 2008

On my macbook the "wacky client" mounts the volume as some kind of DVD-ROM, to which I have neither read nor write privileges. I can't figure out how to get rid of the encrypted part.
posted by roofus at 7:03 AM on May 8, 2008

It's not that the stick won't mount. It should certainly mount. However, due to the Windows-only encryption system, you won't be able to do anything with it. You will have to install XP on your MacBook in order to access any data on the stick or write to it.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:53 AM on May 8, 2008

You can make any thumbdrive a multiplatform secure drive via TrueCrypt and a batch script. There are about a billion tutorials out there on doing this. (Batch script only required if you want automation.)
posted by TomMelee at 11:28 AM on May 8, 2008

If you keep all your files in the password-protected part then you'll have trouble because it is a .exe command, but if you just save your files to the same "front-screen area" as the data traveler icon they are unprotected and can be accessed with a mac.

Not sure if having the files unprotected between work and home is an option or not.
posted by doppleradar at 4:02 AM on May 9, 2008