WiebeTech today fixes one of the few glaring holes in USB storage devices. The
USB WriteBlocker is a flash drive based USB pass-through connector which allows Mass Storage USB devices to be read and prevents them from being written to. Simply plug any
USB drive into the WriteBlocker and plug the WriteBlocker into a PC or Mac. They also make a software utility (PC Only) for use in conjunction with the WriteBlocker that displays information about the connected drive. This will be of great use to forensic investigators trying to preserve the contents of a hard drive during investigations. Too often, operating systems leave traces of their connections on slave drives which can compromise the legal chain of evidence or alert a suspect they are under scrutiny. The devices claims to be able to process mono-directional data transfer at up to 10MB/s. This is not as fast USB 2.0 but internal processing of the data imposes its own limits.
Some operating systems will complain about not being able to write at least some data to attached drives. When the operating system gets confused or encounters too many errors it may freeze up. They include a simple toggle button to disconnect and remount the drive to help cope with those errors. We've often wished for the ability to write-protect USB drives. This would allow someone to use them for antivirus without
worrying about getting
infected when updating portable virus signatures. Unfortunately the price is pretty steep at $199 but it for many it's worth it.
Palm Vein Scanning Finally Almost Affordable
By Ian Chiu on October 13th, 2009
