This is pretty interesting. A co-worker just pointed out the ClipDrive Bio series of USB "drives." It claims to be:

ClipDrive Bio is the most secure and advanced USB 2.0 & USB 1.1 data storage device on the market. Using leading edge biometric fingerprint technology, the scanner authenticates a user's identity & then gives the user access to the hidden secure partition on the ClipDrive Bio. All data saved on the Secure Partition portion of the ClipDrive Bio is automatically encrypted and hidden.

Anyone using these things? It seems like a good place to store passwords if it really works. (That's how it came up in the discussion in the first place.)

Does it really require Windows? I can't tell for sure.

Posted by jzawodn at March 02, 2004 03:11 PM

Reader Comments
# pmp said:

Yeah... but how much? In order to answer that question, I must email or fax a request for quotation.

My guess... not cheap, and probably no rebate forms to get my purchase price back either.

Neat idea though. I hope that biometrics-based auth takes off. I hate pins, passwords, passphrases, and forgot flows.

on March 2, 2004 03:20 PM
# david said:

I believe Sony has a "biometric" offering going along as well. I can't be sure though. I remember seeing it at the Frys in Fremont.

on March 2, 2004 03:32 PM
# Courtney said:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/6768/

on March 2, 2004 04:12 PM
# Charles said:

How much? About two to three times as much as regular USB keychains. I saw their booth at the RSA Conference. Right now these don't look like a standard mass storage device to hosts, so they require special drivers. I guess they only have them for Windows so far. But they told me they would have a "driverless" solution in a few months. That's what I'll want to buy. (They also have fingerprint reader protected large external hard drives.)

on March 2, 2004 05:34 PM
# rentzsch said:

Watch out for the dreaded gelatin finger attack!

on March 2, 2004 10:23 PM
# Sam Newman said:

Hmm - the masthead picture on their site appears to show the device plugged in to a mac keyboard...

on March 3, 2004 02:41 AM
# pete said:

...appears to show the device plugged in to a mac...

Oh great, I guess you have to use Virtual PC to get it to work on a Mac ;)

on March 3, 2004 10:36 AM
# René said:

From the specs: Compatible Operating Systems: Windows 98/98SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP

on March 3, 2004 03:52 PM
# Jeremy Zawodny said:

A lot of stuff SAYS that on the box but works just fine with Linux anyway.

on March 3, 2004 04:01 PM
# Aristotle Pagaltzis said:

Yeah, when the manufacturer doesn't want to have to support Linux — since they didn't claim to support it you can't complain if it doesn't work. It would be nice if they would just say so though — at least something like "may work on unsupported operating systems with drivers conforming to the Frobobnitz 3.14 standard" so the savvier folks could figure the rest out for themselves.

on March 6, 2004 12:16 PM
# Mika said:

Tried to use these ones, though it does not seem to be very convenient and not enough trust - as there is no proof that a strong encryption is used inside the drive.
So decided to stay with an encryption program to encrypt the whole USB drive's partition (almost). It also can be run directly from a USB drive - without installation.

http://www.private-disk.net/

on March 21, 2005 04:35 AM
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