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A comment on Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optical drive. Parent comment

Re:Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optica... by overshard on Thursday July 28, 2011 @03:21PM (#2818481)
I don't think you understand the point of this. It will allow you to create read only USB drives. This means that people who work on computers all the time now don't have to haul a case of CDs around because viruses could possibly jump onto their read-write thumb drive. They can now setup a thumbdrive with all their tools and it's "read only".
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Re:Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optica... by rektide on Thursday July 28, 2011 @04:56PM (#2818896)
$ cat /etc/fstab

/ /dev/sda2 ext4 ro 1 1

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Re:Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optica... by ryan-c on Thursday July 28, 2011 @06:19PM (#2819222)
That really doesn't protect the device from an infected system - it can just remount it rw. You need a hardware write blocker to protect against a malicious system.
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Re:Isostick: the USB memory stick that thinks it’s an optica... by overshard on Friday July 29, 2011 @10:05AM (#2821781)
You don't need a hardware write blocker, the beauty of "burning" an ISO to a thumb drive is that the ISO format doesn't allow writes. There is no way at all to write to it unless you rewrite the drive itself in which case it becomes fairly obvious.
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