MIPT: Secure Flash Card

Main article: USB-flash (flash drive)

2024: Creating a flash drive

MIPT USB stick In created with the protection of a new generation. The university announced this on October 4, 2024.

The developed flash card is equipped with an authentication unit with which the device recognizes not only legal users, but also the circle of computers on which it can be used. Also, the portable media is equipped with an automatic data concealment system, which makes it impossible to read them directly from the microcircuit.

According to one of the developers, head of the information protection department of MIPT Valery Konyavsky, only the user and administrator have legal access to the information that is stored on a secure flash drive. In this case, the user can set and edit the list of "allowed" computers and perform other actions related to granting access. The administrator's media usage scenario is read-only and write-only.

The initial setting of the statuses' user'and' admin'occurs using special software that runs directly from the USB flash drive. The software is stored in the device's memory, you cannot delete or overwrite it. The software part has two special consoles - for the administrator and for the user. Here the question arises about how many administrators and users can have a flash drive? One administrator and one user. With personal use of the device, one person can combine these two roles, with corporate use, it is better to separate these statuses, "says Valery Konyavsky, head of the information protection department at MIPT.

Protected flash drives developed at MIPT can be used in a secure computer system from which data cannot be removed and into which extraneous data cannot be entered. For example, within the framework of the local network of the enterprise. The integration of flash cards with the authentication unit into the information system does not reduce its security, since external media cannot be used outside of it.

If an attacker decides to bypass the established restrictions and extract a memory chip from a flash drive to read data directly from it, he will not be able to do so, since he will see the data encrypted. At the same time, a legal user who opens a flash drive on a permitted computer will see a regular file, - continued Valery Konyavsky.

The developers' immediate plans are to enter small-scale production of protected flash drives exclusively. It is assumed that the finished product will be import-independent, that is, it will be made exclusively from domestic components.