How to encrypt a USB drive without admin rights?

[wurst]

wurst: heh, yet another tool... and using webdav for local access of files? Seems pretty... funky. Is there any guarantee that unencrypted data is never exposed?

-f0dder (March 09, 2010, 06:59 AM)

The WebDAV approach makes it possible to use it even without admin rights.
As the magazine is excellent and they are VERY security conscious, I couldn't imagine them developing a faulty tool. All components are open source. But I haven't tried it yet...

[TomD101]

Hello all,

I use the tool hidesfiles for a few years now. It can be downloaded and tested from http://www.hidesfiles.com/. It is fully functional, but restricted to 10 files alltogether.
After testing it costs $ 40.
Please look up the site, read the FAQ and descriptions. This is by far the most convenient and powerful tool I have seen so far. No admin rights, no hassles, the prog can be installed on several machines and any hidden files (on usb or hdd) can be made visible no matter on which machine the files were hidden in the first place. Without the tool and the created account, files stay hidden, no matter what OS you use to access the hdd or stick.

I can't reccomend it enough. If you have questions, write me, though I usually browse my pms once a month (when I get notified about the new newsletter). Though one of the real great sites, I have no time to visit it regularly.

Best from Berlin, Germany
Thomas

[MerleOne]

Have you tried to recover a file using Easeus Data Recovery Wizard or equivalent ? I am asking because I used a similar tool once, and just a scan of a recovery tool was able to make "invisible" files appear.

[TomD101]

I tried a few tools like PC Inspector FILE RECOVERY, Undelete tools, using the USB-stick on another computer, DOS environment, show hidden folders etc.
If a file or a folder is hidden, you have no trace it ever existed. The only way to trace it, is to compare the free space on a hdd or a stick and compare it to the total amount of bits and bytes of the files stored there.
If you have a 4GB stick, hide 2 GB, and store 20 files with 500kb alltogether, the properties of the stick will show used amount of 2,5 gb.
Apart from that, I (personally) have not found any way to make files visible again.

Thomas
Berlin, Germany

[f0dder]

TomD101: that application doesn't sound too useful to me - it's apparent that something is taking up space on the disk, and if there isn't any encryption added, it's going to be a trivial matter getting at the file data. Wonder how it works - might be doing a "partially corrupt" filesystem, or perhaps it's something lame like renaming files to have a $ prefix. Guess one should take a look at what it's doing with Porcess Monitor

[TomD101]

Hello f0dder, as I am no coder, have no coders or other specialists around me, I only tried to find the data with the aforementioned tools.
Maybe you find a way to make the hidden files visible. The trial version lets you hide 10 files, no matter where (i.e. 5 on a stick, 2 on hdd1, and so on.
Please let us know what you find.

Till next
Thomas
Berlin, Germany

[delwoode]

Sidenote:  I love Roboform2Go (the portable version).  Such a great thing.  All your passwords are with you and you don't have to worry too much about losing your usb drive.  If you do need to keep a few other things secure, you can use Roboform's note capabilities.  But if you actually need secure/encrypted files beyond that, it's going to be a pain in the butt.

-superboyac (February 19, 2010, 03:37 PM)

I was not impressed with roboform. After I installed it I started up Firefox but no toolbar visible and when I logged into a site roboform didnt start into action. To cut a long story short I had to go to their website and manually install a firefox extension to get it to work with firefox 3.6  (I did that today) finally it works. 
Havent used it much yet so we will see if it works as good as the firerfox extension "Lastpass" which works well and is free.
Oh and when trying to install my antivirus program had to be shut down as it thought there was a trojan present.