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From: eric selk on 28 Sep 2009 17:52
On Sep 25, 5:44 pm, "Pavel A." <pave...(a)12fastmail34.fm> wrote:
> Try a flash drive formatted with some kind of file system not recognized by
> Windows?
> --pa

I've been thinking about this route, at least to start with, until we
can mass produce something custom. I haven't found anyone that sales
such a thing though, and I haven't found any tools that will let me
unformat a flash drive to the point that Windows will not try to
autoplay it.
From: eric selk on 28 Sep 2009 18:04
On Sep 26, 12:10 pm, Tim Roberts <t...(a)probo.com> wrote:
> Microchip sells a number of inexpensive microcontrollers with USB
> functionality, running $5 to $7 in small quantities.  They with an
> extensive set of sample firmware options, including HID.

Thanks, I started looking around their website. It will probably take
me some time to complete this task. However, it seems like they might
only sale the chips, so then I'd still need to figure out how to get
those in to some flash drive (or anything small) looking case. Most
of that type of work probably happens in other countries (for anything
cheap anyway), and contacting them would be dificult. We've tried to
contact the manufacturer of our current flash drives, ChipsBank, and
even through our vendor here in the USA, and it is just a mess (they
don't speak Windows development, and we don't speak device
manufacturing -- not to mention they don't speak English). Took
forever just to get them to correctly assign a unique serial number to
every flash drive as Windows requires (they thought we wanted to
serialize the product name field and wanted to charge an arm and a leg
to do that).

> HOWEVER, if all you are doing is reading the serial number from the
> descriptors, you need to understand that it is trivially easy for someone
> who has their own programmable device to burn whatever descriptors they
> want into it.  It would take me about 60 seconds to burn your descriptors
> into one of my FX2 demo boards and spoof your software.

Yes, I understand, although it is dificult to change the info on an
existing device, correct? They way I understand it, you would need
OEM specific software/hardware to modify one of their devices.
However, either way, this isn't a major issue for our application.
Our application isn't something that a hacker would target because it
doesn't really buy you anything by spoofing a device (except maybe
data corruption or your office admin getting upset with you)... I wish
I could provide more info to make that point clear, but our
provisional patent hasn't been finialized yet.
From: Tim Roberts on 28 Sep 2009 22:31
eric selk <eselk2003(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Yes, I understand, although it is dificult to change the info on an
>existing device, correct?

Unless the manufacturer has provided a way, it is impossible.
--
Tim Roberts, timr(a)probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
From: Kosta on 29 Sep 2009 03:24
On Sep 25, 8:41 am, eric selk <eselk2...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm in search of a cheap and easily available (I need to start with
> small quantities) USB device.  Pretty much anything small that can be
> plugged in to a USB port.  I want something that will cause Windows to
> give the least amount of feedback possible when plugged in, not
> something that Windows might try to autoplay, and for sure not
> something that Windows will ask the user to install a driver for.
>
> The purpose would be for my software which is already installed and
> running on the PC to query the device for the unique serial number.  I
> don't need to use the device for anything else, just the serial
> number.
>
> I have another program that uses flash drives for this, and I can
> query the serial number fine (serial number and product name/vendor
> name set by the OEM).  For that product we like the autoplay/autorun
> features because we use that for our software install, and then we
> unmount the volume so that it doesn't autorun in the future.  For this
> product we will have nothing on the device, and will only be using the
> serial number.  I know I could cancel the autoplay (although I'm not
> sure how I could cancel just for our device and not other flash drives
> the user may have), and after the first time I can unmount the volume
> that Windows assigns so that it doesn't autoplay in the future... but
> ideally this device would never autoplay (without me breaking other
> USB autoplay), and wouldn't show up as a drive or even have any
> storage space on it (would think it would be cheaper).
>
> I've seen various "dongles" and "smart card" devices that people are
> selling for copy protection, but they are a combined software and
> hardware solution, or are more expensive than plain flash drives, and
> we aren't using this for copy protection or login/security.  It
> doesn't need to be "secure", I can't really say exactly what our idea
> is, but it isn't anything related to security or copy protection.
>
> We currently pay about $5 each for the flash drives, so anything in
> that range or cheaper would work, especially if the user experience
> was better (no autoplay).  I think a HID device would be ideal, but it
> needs to be small/generic, not something like an actual mouse or
> keyboard... something that looks like a flash drive would be ideal.

Hi Eric,

Would you prefer free? (in terms of cost, not time) There is always
using DSF provided in the WDK. There are some great examples there,
but of course, there will be some significant work on your part.
Beauty is, you can make anything you want and make it do anything you
want.

DSF is great for a number of purposes, including simulating a device
that is not yet available and also forcing various conditions to test
out your driver.

Hope this helps,
Kosta
From: eric selk on 30 Sep 2009 09:50
> Would you prefer free? (in terms of cost, not time)  There is always
> using DSF provided in the WDK.  There are some great examples there,
> but of course, there will be some significant work on your part.
> Beauty is, you can make anything you want and make it do anything you
> want.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Kosta

Could be an option, but that only covers the software side, and I need
something users can plug in to an actual USB port. Also, since the
device doesn't actually need to do anything (just have a serial
number), guess I don't really need any software on it... excuse me if
my terms are incorrect, it is probably "firmware" when you are talking
about software on hardware.
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