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Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for people to carry USB thumb drives in their bags, laptops or even a lanyard. USB thumb drives are a convenient medium for transferring data easily between computers in different locations where it may not be possible to attain internet or network access. Recently, I discovered that Kingmax were manufacturing tiny, simcard-sized USB thumb drives. I thought that this would make a great addition to my keyring.

This is no where near as dorky as wearing a USB thumb drive around your neck on a lanyard or as inconvenient as having to search your bag for where you placed your thumb drive. Now, I thought to myself “What can I actually use this thumb drive for?” and then it clicked. My SSH private key and SAMBA passwords on a small, encrypted partition.

In an attempt to crack down on SSH security, I stumbled upon SSH publickeys. This method of authentication requires the user to possess a local private key and for the sever to contain the respective publickey in order to make a valid login. By disabling PAM and standard password authentication, it makes it rather difficult to break into the box without the key. Furthermore, you can protect your private key with a passphrase, further enhancing security. While some people will disable the passphrase to use password-less logins, I still feel that’s a massive security hole. If your system was ever compromised and someone attained your key, they could potentially gain access to your server. While this may appear unlikely, I don’t take any chances.

Currently, I’ve been busy with another [massive] project and I haven’t worked out how to encrypt the partition and ensure compatibility between Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Therefore, the thumb drive only contains an individual SSH private key which I can use to remotely login to the server from outside of home.

This Kingmax 512MB USB thumb drive was $25 from Computer Alliance.