Bitcoin Forum

Economy => Marketplace => Topic started by: coreking on April 11, 2012, 10:30:11 AM



Title: You can now buy a cryptostick with bitcoin
Post by: coreking on April 11, 2012, 10:30:11 AM
Recently you can purchase the crypto-stick with bitcoins, you can see their announcement at: http://www.crypto-stick.com/2012/bitcoin

The device is basically a usb stick with an openpgp smartcard inside it ( http://g10code.com/p-card.html )

So the general idea is, you can securely store your pgp keys on the cryptostick to make it impossible for malware to extract the keys from the stick.


Title: Re: You can now buy a cryptostick with bitcoin
Post by: dunand on April 11, 2012, 04:10:50 PM
Cool, what can you do with it?


Title: Re: You can now buy a cryptostick with bitcoin
Post by: MiningBuddy on April 11, 2012, 04:22:30 PM
Will certainly be buying one of these once they fix their bitcoin payment confirmation section of the site.
I still have nightmares from the last time I forgot to backup my PGP keys  :'(


Title: Re: You can now buy a cryptostick with bitcoin
Post by: zer0 on April 12, 2012, 01:23:59 AM
I've had a cryptostick for awhile
Waiting for 2.0 version to come out where you can store encrypted files on it too like an Ironkey

Comes in handy if you need access to a pub computer and want to encrypt msgs without giving your priv key away


Title: Re: You can now buy a cryptostick with bitcoin
Post by: arby on April 12, 2012, 08:51:12 AM
very interesting, i am interested in one also, but i would like to learn more about it first, i guess an youtube video would help on that website, because you do not understand much if you are a beginner with computers


Title: Re: You can now buy a cryptostick with bitcoin
Post by: coreking on April 12, 2012, 10:52:14 AM
Well this is just standard PGP, if you havnt used it before, it basically consists of a private key and public key.

The private key is used to decrypt messages that have been encrypted using the corresponding public key.

So you can give everyone your public key and it will not aid an attacker who wants to decrypt messages.

The other major thing you can do is "sign" a message with your private key, to prove you wrote a message.

So in this case, the cryptostick holds the private key and the decryption process is performed on the cryptostick, keeping the private key safe even if the computer you plug it into is compromised.

If you've never used PGP before, you can already do all of this just with software except with weaker protection for your private key. You could start by starting to encrypt your emails using GPG, (you can just get thunderbird + enigmail )


Title: Re: You can now buy a cryptostick with bitcoin
Post by: RaggedMonk on April 12, 2012, 05:59:28 PM
Cool. Watching.


Title: Re: You can now buy a cryptostick with bitcoin
Post by: casascius on April 12, 2012, 06:03:33 PM
I bought two of them but didn't realize they don't work in Windows (or the setup was beyond my willingness to tolerate).  I don't normally use Linux for e-mail.  They are still brand new in the original packaging.


Title: Re: You can now buy a cryptostick with bitcoin
Post by: zer0 on April 19, 2012, 12:50:38 AM
I bought two of them but didn't realize they don't work in Windows (or the setup was beyond my willingness to tolerate).  I don't normally use Linux for e-mail.  They are still brand new in the original packaging.

They work with windows
Quote
Windows

    When connecting the Crypto Stick to your computer Windows should prompt you to automatically search and install the appropriate device driver. Confirm all questions so that the USB smart card device driver is installed nearly automatically. Note that Windows Vista and above will fail to install an additional device driver for the smart card. This is okay and you can continue to use the Crypto Stick with most applications. Only if you intent to use the Crypto Stick for local Windows login, with Internet Explorer or Chrome web browser, you should install this minidriver.

    In general GPG4Win is a recommendable package for Windows which contains GnuPG 2 and further usefull tools for encryption purposes (e.g. GpgOL plugin to use GnuPG and Crypto Stick with Outlook). Alternatively you can download and install GnuPG 1 binary.

I'll buy one if you still have it. Could use another one. Price?
These things are awesome for encrypting entire drives all sorts of functions

Ironkey is also a good hardware encrypted USB, works with windows easily but can store files on it. I have a few of those too


Title: Re: You can now buy a cryptostick with bitcoin
Post by: arby on April 19, 2012, 09:16:15 AM
thanks for the reply coreking