HN Explorer

Anchor: Hardware-based authentication using SanDisk USB devices

9 points by rewant ↗ HN
Anchor is a cross-platform desktop application that provides hardware-based authentication using SanDisk USB devices. The application automatically detects USB connection/disconnection events and provides secure database access only when an authorized USB device is connected.

Github:https://github.com/TheEleventhAvatar/Anchor

4 comments

[ 81.1 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] thread
KomoD
To call this "security" is funny in my opinion, can't any application also fetch the serial number?

And also do they not get saved in logs like dmesg?

vivid242
If you can restrict the software, this would be a good way for controlling physical user ‚presence‘ - like in the supermarket, when a supervisor needs to scan their card for a cash register to take out a wrongly scanned item. I like it!
alexpotato
You could also use encrypted and signed keys on the devices to confirm that it's the correct drive.

Was recently watching a video on the RFID tags that Bambu Labs use on their spools and not only is the tag data encrypted, it's signed so even if you bypass the encryption, you still don't have a way to spoof the signature.

maximusdrex
Calling this "hardware-based security" is somewhere between disingenuous and dangerously naive. Hardware-based security normally implies hardware with a dedicated secure element with cryptographic identities which are impossible to spoof. Security based on USB serial numbers can be defeated by any adversarial device claiming to use the same serial device as a device you have registered. There's no secure signatures or anything backing a USB serial number.

This is so, so much worse than that though, because the code doesn't even do what the AI-hallucinated documentation describes, because as far as I can tell the actual "serial number" is returned by the following line: Ok(Some(format!("{:?}", device.product_id()))) So the "serial number" is actually the USB product id, which generally corresponds to the "model", not even unique per-device. So you didn't even test this with multiple identical flash drives.