Flash memory sticks

[thechairman18 174]

When I'm on holiday in Thailand, I use Internet cafes, as I don't have a Laptop.

I have a Flash memory stick, which I insert in the USB socket of the PC.

I do online banking, as I like to keep up to date with my finance's.

My question is, if someone a fitted a keystroke logger onto the PC I'm using, will they be able to read my actions, or will my using the Flash stick, thwart their efforts.

 

thechairman18

[dumberdays 0]

Hi

In reply I dont really know what the flash memory key would change if a keystroker was being used , do you mean that all your personal info is on the stick? if so you would still have to connect to the internet to access your account presumably , I should take the advice of others who have asked this security question and only use a place that has been recommended by a long term expat if you want to remain secure , but I will bow down to anyone who knows more than I do , I wouldnt personally use online banking in any of the internet cafes as you can bet they are not that bothered about your security as most people just use them to send emails here and there , hope this helps,

[mykl 72]

When I'm on holiday in Thailand, I use Internet cafes, as I don't have a Laptop.

I have a Flash memory stick, which I insert in the USB socket of the PC.

I do online banking, as I like to keep up to date with my finance's.

My question is, if someone a fitted a keystroke logger onto the PC I'm using, will they be able to read my actions, or will my using the Flash stick, thwart their efforts.

 

thechairman18

 

A keylogger will still read your keystrokes even using a thumb drive. On a secure computer, preferably your own, download and install a password reminder onto the thumbdrive. Visit all the sites you normally do that require passwords and when the password reminder asks to remember them click yes. Now when you visit your bank site for instance you will not have to type the password, the program will fill in the password line and cover it with asterisks. Click ok and you are in. This way even if they take a screen shot they cannot get the password. Still could be a problem if the screen shows any info that could lead to you. Most professional financial sites are pretty carefull about not showing confidential data, but they have to show some or they are of no use. Also, if you are transfering money between accounts or some such you are going to have to type, and the logger will record the keystrokes. If your email has confidential data and is recorded by a screen shot you could still be compromised. If you can manage it, take your own laptop with a good firewall and virus checker.

[drpaul854 0]

I am copying this from another forum by a member who is also a member here and who I believe is currently out of Thailand traveling in Cambodia - it may help you - most of it is beyond my lievel of expertise to comment on it:

 

 

Hey I know alot of people are worried about thier online security while in South East Asia. With keyloggers at internet cafes and the paranoia that comes along with traveling around the world with a laptop it's a bit nerveracking at times. So, I decided to figure out a safe secure way for me and you to use Internet cafes all over the world and still have the basic avalabilty of most of our laptop applications. I am sharing it with the board so people can worry about others things.. like the ladies.

 

First off you need to buy a USB Drive. I bought a 2 GB Corsair which can be found here if you are in the States. If not you can look around for something similar. I use Corsair because they make excellent memory and thier prices are very resonable for USB drives.

 

Ok, so you get your new USB drive home. What to do next. Well before you load your new shiny programs onto the drive you need to make some decisions.

 

* The first decision is what file system to use. FAT, FAT 32 or NTFS.

* 2nd question.. What type of computers will you be plugging your USB drive into.

 

So as not to get too complicated I'll break it down like this.

 

Basically:

 

• Fat16 is fine for every computer, but it uses more space on disk.

• Fat32 is good to use as long as I'm only using windows 98 and up

• NTFS is probably the best as long as I'm using windows 2000/XP up

 

 

**Note** If you are going to plug your USB drive into a mac you CANNOT use NTFS. **Note**

 

..ok So I've decided to use NTFS as my file system. Why ?

NTFS performs better, for one thing. USB drives are normally formated as a FAT drive and are rather slow. Plus, if the drive is ever pulled in the middle of a write (or a power failure occurs), you won't hose your drive. Thanks to the NTFS log, a file operation is either completed or it doesn't happen at all. FAT32 doesn't offer this protection. I like this protection.

 

So that decision made I .. plug in my USB and click on start in the bottom right hand of the computer and goto RUN

 

Type this into the box:

convert X: /FS:NTFS /NoSecurity

 

(where X is the drive letter of your USB key). It'll convert any FAT/FAT32 drive to NTFS. The NoSecurity switch grants all users write access to the drive, so you won't run into trouble on Limited/Guest-level accounts. That will happen in alot of Internet Cafes.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Ok you are all set to get your first program.

 

Go here and download Firefox Portable. Read the page and install it.

(If you have Firefox on your computer your local Firefox profile is usually installed in C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.???\

Just copy all of those files except the cache directories to the profile directory within Firefox Portable on your USB drive. When you start Firefox Portable for the first time, be sure to turn off disk cache, password saving and history. You can set all of these within the Privacy tab of the Firefox Options window. Sometimes, certain profiles will cause the launcher to fail or hang. This is usually due to an incompatible extension.) If this happens, delete the directory, install again and download your extensions one by one. Once you have set up Firefox you can go on to the next step.

 

Next thing to do is surf to here and buy this program. Roboform Portable

 

Basically it does three things:

1) It stores all you passwords to every internet site on your USB drive.

2) It encrypts every password with AES encryption - the strongest encryption available. No one is gonna crack your passwords.

3) This is important to us. It defeats Keyloggers. When RoboForm enters the saved password into form fields, it is not typing them through the keyboard, so if a keylogger is installed on a computer and it is monitoring keyboard events for passwords, it will get no keyboard clicks when you use RoboForm to enter passwords.

 

So you can safely log onto your bank accounts etc. no problem. Sweet eh ? Once you finish this step, onto some more stuff. The rest is easy.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Ok, so here is a list of the other programs you want on you USB key and thier website addresses. They are all FREEWARE and have been tested by me and many others for thier portabilty.

 

* 1) Pstart - PStart is an application menu that allows you to easily launch your portable apps. When run, it sits in your system tray and brings up an icon menu of the apps you have on your portable device. *Must Have*

* 2) Portable Thunderbird - Mozilla Thunderbird - Portable Edition is the popular Mozilla Thunderbird email client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your email, address book and account settings with you. You can also get it with GPG and Enigmail preconfigured to encrypt and sign your email. You can even get your Gmail on here and no one can look at it. Here is a guide to get Gmail on there.

* 3) Portable OpenOffice.org - The complete office suite that's completely portable.

* 4) McAfee AVERT Stinger- Stinger is a stand-alone utility used to detect and remove specific viruses. It is not a substitute for full anti-virus protection, but rather a tool to assist administrators and users when dealing with an infected system. Stinger utilizes next generation scan engine technology, including process scanning, digitally signed DAT files, and scan performance optimizations.

* 5) Converber- Converber is a unit converter. It is a powerful software utility that will help make easy conversions between 924 various units of measure in 31 categories.

* 6) Scan2PDF- A utility for bulk scanning, converting the scanned pages to PDF and burning them on CD/DVD for archiving.

* 7) Portable Gimp - Photoshop on your USB drive. Sweet !

* 8) Portable VLC Media Player -play your media anywhere. You can take your audio and video files along with everything you need to play them on the go.

* 9) WinDV Portable - is a small and easy to use Windows application for capturing videos from DV device (camcorder) into AVI-files and for recording AVI-files into DV device via FireWire (IEEE 1394) interface.

* 10) Ifranview - IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows

* 11) The Sage - TheSage is a complete dictionary and a multifaceted thesaurus of the English language. It runs locally, and does not use your Internet connection.

* 12) Faststone Capture - FastStone Capture is a powerful, flexible and intuitive screen-capture utility. It allows you to capture anything on the screen

* 13) Cybershredder - CyberShredder is a quick, safe and handy utility that lets you erase confidential files from your computer permanently.

* 14) Faststone Photo Resizer - FastStone Photo Resizer is an image converter / resizer intended to enable users to convert, rename, resize, crop, rotate, change color depth, add text and watermarks to images in a quick and easy batch mode.

* 15) Portable Gaim - Portable Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging client that works with AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! and more. You can log into multiple networks all with the same program. All your IM settings and buddy lists are self-contained, so it leaves no personal information behind on the machine you run it on.

* 16) Portable Firezilla - Portable FileZilla is the popular FileZilla FTP client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your server list and settings with you.

* 17) Foxit PDF Reader - Foxit Reader is a free reader for PDF (Portable Document Format) documents. You can view and print PDF documents with it.

* 18) Virtual Notes - Sticky Notes... Roboform has one inside which encrypts your notes.

* 19) IE Privacy Keeper Portable - Whether you are using Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, IE Privacy Keeper automatically cleans up the browser history once you are done surfing the net. It also shreds the files.

* 20) Remora USb Guard - Remora USB File Guard is designed to do file encryption and compression in your USB storage devices. With Remora USB File Guard, you can secure all your files and store them in USB disk anytime and anywhere. (Axcrypt is my favorite but it's not portable)

* 21) Xemico Address Book - XemiCo Address Book is a contact manager for everyday use. The program is as simple and straightforward as one can be.

 

and last but not least

 

* 22) Portable ClamWin - Portable ClamWin is the popular ClamWin antivirus packaged as a portable app, so you can take your antivirus with you to scan files on the go.

* 23 ) Board Member Scruff suggested Advanced Diary which is a free private digital diary for your daily records/trip reports. It's a very nice/functional program.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

Next you will want to organize your USB drive so it's not cluttered. Make folders for Utilities, Anti Virus Etc. and drag all the installed apps into the various folders. All the apps are stand alone so don't worry about moving them around to organize.

 

After that open PStart and drag and drop all your programs into it. Leave PStart.exe in the root folder of your USB drive.

 

Defrag the drive...

 

Go and download the freeware program Allway Sync

Install it to your home computer/laptop. Make a USB backup directory on your hardrive somewhere. Run Allway Sync and sync the drive. Run it whenever your change files on your USB drive.

 

That's it. I am sure that there are other apps. Feel free to add yours and/or correct me on anything I might have missed or gotten wrong.

 

Rename the USB Drive. You will be very safe using this USB drive on the most infested keylogging thieving Internet Shops on the planet... and it all fits in your pocket. Sweet huh ? If you lose your USB drive or it's stolen. No problem. Just go home, buy a new drive and sync from your Briefcase you made. It'll take 2 minutes. Then goto all the websites and change you passwords if you are paranoid. It'll take them a Kray super computer and a lifetime to crack your passwords anyway..so you've got a few days at least to change your passwords and every website is already in you Briefcase.

 

--*****

 

All these programs come to 352mb On a NTFS formated drive. About 550mb on a FAT drive

 

EDIT:Aug 11. Added Advanced Diary, suggested by board member Scruff

[papillon 695]

Don't waste your time with the above info. It is not secure.

[farangkwaiyai 46]

I understand what the guy was saying in that post, I would have only suggested that to show off.

 

Keystroke loggers have been outsmarted because banks use dropdown menus now. You are more likely to get problems storing your passwords on a device rather than your head. Even files that have been deleted off a flash drive remain on there for some time.

 

I would recommend buying a USB with a password on tho. It'll stop most people.

 

This guy is even telling you to defrag a NTFS drive... they are meant to be so efficient that it doesnt need it.

Edited October 9, 2006 by farangmaikwai

[casper_uk 12]

I think I read a pretty good solution to this on a previous post .....

 

Open notepad and type something like the following

 

junhdfnnslljwueocjnlsn

 

owiuekjfoosnfelnlujsoc

 

then when you need to enter the code/pass into a page, just drag 'n' drop the relevent section.

 

Obviously, still a worry about screen grabs but keylogging should be sorted.

[Samsonite 181]

This guy is even telling you to defrag a NTFS drive... they are meant to be so efficient that it doesnt need it.

Sorry, I have to disagree. Very little of anything mickeysoft has done was done well and while NTFS is better than then older FAT16 and FAT32 file systems, it still needs to be defraged on a regular basis.

[farangkwaiyai 46]

Sorry, I have to disagree. Very little of anything mickeysoft has done was done well and while NTFS is better than then older FAT16 and FAT32 file systems, it still needs to be defraged on a regular basis.

 

Sorry you are right. My mate just finished his degree in IT related stuff and he told me NTFS is that solid/efficient it does not need a defrag, i just researched it and it seems that it needs less frequent defraging than FAT32. I'm glad you corrected me, I'm defraging tonight. I will check up on what he says from now on...

[papillon 695]

Defragmenting an NTFS drive. Another complete waste of time. Your mate was right.

[Badtz 0]

Don't waste your time with the above info. It is not secure.

What exactly is unsecure about it ?

 

 

Defragmenting an NTFS drive. Another complete waste of time. Your mate was right.

NTFS volumes have no fragmentation, and therefore never need defragmentation?

Would that be true of an NTFS drive that is say...75% full ?

[Scumbag 0]

If you are concerned about keystroke loggers then I guess all you want to do is not type in your details on an insecure computer. A way to do this is to have a text file with your log-ins details on your thumb drive. Obviously don't have what sites they are for on the same thumb drive. When you want to log in open the text file and copy and paste the information into the correct places.

[player 1]

Last I heard, there are over 200 key logger programs circulating. I use a program called X-Cleaner to look for keyloggers etc.. It's small enough to copy to a CD and simply run it before you use an internet cafe PC. There is a free version and a fee version. I'm surprised more people don't use a program like this when they travel.

[deadman 0]

as far as i'm aware, ntfs or fat/fat32 formats will not make any difference on usb sticks. it is still dependant on your security credentials on the OS. if you format using ntfs, you will get more space as it uses less clusters than fat32/fat. also, i may be wrong here but ntfs volumes fragments more than fat32 due to their cluster sizes!

 

[BillWilson 10]

JMHO

(have to put that in because you seem to me a angry mob)

 

I use a USB mem stick with U3 see www.u3.com

 

put it in

loads a small pgm

opens its own browser and other pgms

the entire session stays on the usb stick

when removed, ALL the info points to the fact

that NOTHING stays on the host computer other than

the small pgm loaded

 

i also use Logmein.com to connect to my office computer

my sessions actually take place on my computer in my home

country

 

BW

 

pm me if you want more info

[ilovethailand 0]

I just posted most of this stuff on another thread but here goes...

never never use a hole in the wall internet cafe in Thailand, or America or Spain or any place !!!!

bring a laptop with wi-fi or buy a new Acer for 18,000 baht ($500 -+)....

Get a throw away credit card with a under $100 limit......

Find a good wi-fi place like starbucks etc....

Sign up at www.jwire.com !!!!!!!!

[Big Chief 0]

A computer expert too! WOW!

 

 

I would suggest not doing your online banking on any other computer except for your own. You would be surprised what technology is out there.

[Scumbag 0]

Just a word of warning about using a thumb drive in internet cafes in Thailand. I used one and my personal computer detected a virus on it went in next plugged it in. So the advise is the standard make sure your virus detection software is up-to-date. Also I'd suggest write protecting the thumb drive before using it in an internet cafe.