Hard Drive Pen

Loggin onto AOL i got one of those ad pop ups and it was advertising this.

Quote:

Pen Drive 64MB
Plug & Play Portable PC Hard Drive

If you need to take your work home with you, forget lugging your laptop around, simply save your data or applications onto your portable Pen Drive and put it on your keyring.

To access the data, simply plug your Pen Drive into the USB port of your PC or laptop and you're away!

Accessing and Transporting Data Has Never Been Easier!

- It is a USB storage device that makes transporting your data incredibly easy.
- Just plug into any USB port and it will show up as another hard drive.
- Now you can move, store, or delete data effortlessly.
This ingenious storage device is so versatile you can run applications, view videos, or play MP3 files directly from it.
- It comes in storage capacities of 64MB and 128MB
- It uses non-volatile flash memory so you can safely store and transport your valuable data.
- Hot Plug & Play - Enables you to install the Pen Drive at anytime.
- Durable Solid-state Storage - at least data retention for 10 years.

No Driver necessary: No driver needed for WIN ME, WIN 2000, WIN XP, LINUX and MAC OS.
Cross platform: You can move your data among different OS by just PLUG & PLAY.
Easy Installation: Just plug it into the computer and do nothing more.
No External Power Supply Required: Via USB prot, no other external power is required.
Durable Solid-State Storage: Shock Resistant and more than 10 years data retention.

Requirements

Support Flash ROM ( EEPROM ) for In-System Programming through USB Port that can update the system firmware anywhere and anytime for the security demand.
Support Toshiba & Samsung NAND Flash Memory 32Mbit, 64Mbit, 128Mbit, 256Mbit, 512Mbit and 1Gbit.
Support Specification Reversion 1.1.
Transfer Rate for USB Interface: "Full speed" Up to 12Mbits/sec.
Support the Power Saving Mode to reduce the power consumption while using Pen Drive in the mobile equipment.
Windows 98/Windows 95 OSR2 (with USB Driver).
Suport Windows ME/2000/XP, Mac OS (ver. 8.6 or above) and Linux kernel version 2.4.0 or above without driver.
Provide LED indicator while Pen Drive is busy.

Addtional info can be found at http://www.pendrive.ch/en/index.html. Not something totally new but I thought I would post some infomation.

Also I was wondering if perhaps this might become a tool, giving people the abitly to transport larger volums of data and applications on there keyring might pose a secerity risk? As it also says that there is no driver required for certain platforms, meanig you could effectively plug it and and get to work. Allowing people to have applications running on computer networks simply by puggin in this pen with the appication they wish to use. Am I just seeing a possible threat that isnt there, or is there need or slight concern with this?

Kindred69

It probably could pose a bit of a risk, but only if you you had importand files, and someone stole it. Would it not just act as another hard drive? It would act as like drive D: if you had two partitions, wouldn't it? Just my thoughts...

For me, it'd be a drive K:, or a /mnt/pen or something else...

It could be somewhat of a risk. Mass-Data transfering abilities can be abused in the wrong hands. We are in the day where the Mega-Byte and Giga-Byte is viewed as a slice of cake. The more you have the better, but it is easy to get, and therefore not really all that valuable.

Anything is a risk. If you really know what you are doing, you might even be able to (from my view) transfer data from your sound-card's line out onto your Walkman Tape Player. I haven't tried it yet, but I am guessing that it is possible. You'd need to have a specialized program though, and that little pen in your left pocket does happen to have it... :D Anything is a risk, but they can be contained, though you might end up limiting what a user is able to do. Security isn't just software and permission based, but limiting what hardware a person has access to. So yes, I am guessing that this could be a threat if not handled properly...

/me looks at the paragraph again, and notices a lot of his opinion is in that, which may or may not be cold, hard facts...

-Tim_axe