Another Snake Oil Candidate

Damien Miller djm at mindrot.org
Wed Sep 12 18:44:53 EDT 2007


On Tue, 11 Sep 2007, Aram Perez wrote:

> The IronKey appears to provide decent security while it is NOT plugged into a
> PC. But as soon as you plug it in and you have to enter a password to unlock
> it, the security level quickly drops. This would be the case even if they
> supported Mac OS or *nix.
> 
> As I stated in my response to Jerry Leichter, in my opinion, their marketing
> department is selling snake oil.

It protects against the common threat model of lost/stolen USB keys. Why is
this snake oil? Your criticism seems akin to calling a physical lock insecure
because it doesn't protect you from burglars once you have unlocked it.

-d

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