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Compact Flash

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Seufer
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 4:12 am    Post subject: Compact Flash Reply with quote

I know that there are usb devices that can be used as a "key" to lock and unlock your pc. Is there anyway to use a compact flash card in the same manner?
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0mega
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 5:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Greetings Seufer, welcome to the forums! Smile

Perhaps, if you're lucky, someone can correct me on this.

But, as far as I know, there is no such application or hardware available.

Good idea, but it doesn't look like it's been implemented yet.

(On the bright side, USB pen drives are cheaper than ever these days. Wink )

Cheers,
0mega
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AdamV
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 12:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

no theoretical reason why a CF card solution could not be designed, it's just a lot less universal. Maybe you could put the card in a reader and plug that into USB (with underlying software support for this).

Similar but different, Sanisk have released an SD / USB combo card. Yes, a card which can be used in an SD slot or plugged into USB port directly. Sounds great, if only my digi camera used SD instead of XD!

Have a look here:
http://www.sandisk.com/retail/ultraii-sdplus.asp
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RoboGeek
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think he is looking for a security dongle type thing to secure his PC and not a flash drive.

But you really wouldn't need a CF card to do that - it would be a waste of expensive memory. There are biometeric and card reader solutions to secure PC's already

things like this..

http://www.scmmicro.com/security/keyboard.html
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AdamV
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 7:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

RoboGeek wrote:
I think he is looking for a security dongle type thing to secure his PC and not a flash drive.


That's what I figured too, but the first essential part of those is surely some kind of non-volatile memory? The processing can still be left to the OS (maybe using a custom replacement for GINA). I agree that the most obvious answer for an easy deployment would be to use a smartcard or similar, but that wasn't what was asked.
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M3DU54
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 10:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Then to answer what was asked...

There is no *technical* reason why we could not exchange a USB dongle for a CF ... its sole purpose in this scheme is to hold a secure key and any external storage device could do this ... from USB to Compact Flash, From Floppy to DVD. One could even keep the key on an eprom and present it at the parallel port.

At the end of the day the only thing preventing you from employing any or all of these techniques is the available software support for the scheme... Unfortunately your OS/BIOS is unlikely to support this natively, which is a shame because thats where it is best implemented. If you're a coder, then this ceases to be a problem and you can implement your own solution.


It must be said though that storage devices such as compact flash tend to be openly readable and therefore ultimately copyable, and as such may not make the best repository for your key.

For a slightly more robust solution one could employ a microcontroller IC such as a PIC or Atmel and connect it to the serial or USB. The embedded nature of the devices available make for a more secure system ... and challenge-response schemes become available to you. For very secure systems in a small package you could look at an FPGA, there are prebuilt cores for most FPGAs including full public key implementations.

But still, unless you can code the software to effect this control system then you are stuck with the commercialy available systems.

I'm not aware of any commercial solution which uses Compact Flash in this way - probably because, as has already been pointed out, CF readers are not universally available or common enough to make such an offering profitable for the developer.

Regards,
M3Dz
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Jmorin
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 02, 2005 3:55 am    Post subject: Re: Compact Flash Reply with quote

Seufer wrote:
I know that there are usb devices that can be used as a "key" to lock and unlock your pc. Is there anyway to use a compact flash card in the same manner?



I thought there was a way to convert a SD card or USB thumb drive into "Key" or "Token"? I am currently looking into this for my laptop. Can someone post some links. I have acouple thumb drives laying around which I could use. Thanks.
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