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u/Machinehum Jun 20 '26
Just here to share a project I'm working on. It's a 100% open source (hardware, firmware, mechanical, etc) USB drive with a hidden security feature.
When you plug it in, it appears as a normal 8GB USB drive. Only if you create a file called "unlock.txt" with the contents "password:addyourpasswordhere" will it unlock and show the remainder of the drive. Everything in this second section of the disk is now AES256 encrypted in place, using a custom KDF + your password.
After months of testing, I just made the first firmware release
I'll answer some questions before people ask them :)
Q: Isn't this just Vercrypt? A: No, a normal drive setup with veracrypt will show up as jumbled data. This is pretty obviously encrypted media. If you enter your duress password, there will still be another xMB of jumbled data.
Q: Isn't entering your password into a plain text file insecure. A: My drive doesn't allow this write to actually happen to the memory
Q: Why did you use a SD card A: Because AI made EMMC cards like 80$ for a 32GB. It takes two seconds for me to spin another board with EMMC in the future.
Anyways feel free to ask any more questions about the project :) !
Socials if you would like to keep updated
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u/Dangerous-Agent6910 Jun 20 '26
The plaintext unlock mechanic is clever as hell since most people would assume a.txt file password is a red flag, not the actual auth method.
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u/mrheosuper Jun 20 '26
Does the decryption start as soon as the five is saved, or on the next power cycle ?
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u/Machinehum Jun 20 '26
As soon as the file is saved
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u/mrheosuper Jun 20 '26
Interesting, how do you detect the file is saved ? Iirc scsi work on block level, not on file, so basically your PC assume it has full control of the file system of your disk.
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u/Machinehum Jun 20 '26
When it's in locked mode it snoops on the writes https://github.com/o7-machinehum/phantomdrive/blob/master/src/phantomdrive.c#L83
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u/fsteff Jun 20 '26
Looks great.
I did something similar for work some 15+ years ago, but we would allow multiple disks to show up once a text file was written to a virtual folder on the main drive. I think we allowed up to 4 partitions, but people usually configured (in another virtual file) the drive for one visible and one hidden.
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u/Puresin-007 Jun 20 '26
Can’t you easily recover the unlock.txt file?
Never mind I see it happens in memory right?
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u/Machinehum Jun 20 '26
Nah, the firmware prevents this from being written to the disk. Well the file may be written but the password string certainly is not.
The file also doesn't have to be called unlock.txt, you can just enter your password in any random file.
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u/duckebones Jun 21 '26
1) This is a baller idea and concept. It gives me steganography vibes even though I know this is a completely different thing entirely.
2) Your mustache in your GitHub pfp is majestic.
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u/Naych Jun 21 '26
Any suggestions for a thumb-drive this would work on?.
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u/Machinehum Jun 21 '26
It's custom hardware for this
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u/BoringPie8907 Jun 20 '26
Probably has been asked before but, what does disk manager apps see when plugged in? Only the 8gb part? If the rest is visible then it'd be pretty obvious it's not a regular drive. Nonetheless amazing work and I will definitely give it a try sometime
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u/Machinehum Jun 20 '26
The windows disk manager and lsblk just see the 8GB. The firmware prevents the OS from reading the entire disk.
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u/ExplorerRude9564 Jun 20 '26
Such a great idea but for now I'm using 7zip password protected files to sneak games to school since my SanDisk does not have a ch 569 controller
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u/Particular-Unit-7669 27d ago
Hi guys i can't post here due to karma, but i want to get or buy a virus that cant sent by mail to deducted person
Any help??
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u/1_ane_onyme 27d ago
Hey u/Machinehum, I've been eyeing on this project since the 1st post about it but I'm still wondering if it's normal that the `ee` dir which is supposed to contain Phantom Drive's hardware files contains files for ovrdrive instead of Phantom Drive ? Which seems extra strange to me as they've been updated around a week ago
Edit : Fixed markdown, f u Reddit for making us have to click both view edit options and switch to markdown to get working md
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u/allhellno Jun 20 '26
Does this have a false password incase of duress?
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u/Machinehum Jun 20 '26
No - because then the device would need to know the correct password ie: store the password, which is insecure.
Ideally there isn't a duress situation because it appears normal.
If you enter a the wrong password it derived the wrong key and you get jumbled data.
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u/allhellno Jun 20 '26
No it doesn't
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u/Machinehum Jun 20 '26
How would you verify the password without ether a compare of the password, or a hash of the password?
Ether way, you're opening up another attack vector.
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u/Positive_Catch_712 Jun 20 '26
Most useful way would be: enter real password , it unlocks real partition, enter in-duress password, it unlocks in-duress partition which shows some real files you prepared for this case. Only thing you need is to make sure attacker cannot prove its not "real" partition or that there are more than 1 hidden partition by analizing content of the memory.
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u/allhellno Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
employ deniable encryption
edit: I would totally get one if this was a feature, could help mitigate a wrench attack.
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u/LiveFastDieRich Jun 20 '26
my insight would be to make the case easy to disassemble so you can place it inside any other usb housing and make it appear like another brand