Lockheed Martin introduces 'PC on a stick' flash drive -- yes, Lockheed Martin
By Donald Melanson 
posted January 19th 2010 3:51PM
posted January 19th 2010 3:51PM
Our coverage of Lockheed Martin here on Engadget normally focus on things like laser weapons or futuristic airships, but it looks like the mega-defense company is now trying its hand as something a little closer to home for us: an ultra-secure USB flash drive. As you can see above, that's done with a little help from the folks at IronKey, but Lockheed Martin does seem to have made its new IronClad its own, and included some custom software that promises to let you carry your entire computer with you and securely use it on any public computer. Of course, exact details are a bit hard to come by, but the drive is available with "at least" 8GB of storage, and includes 256-bit encryption, built-in virus protection, and a variety of networking features that will let organizations keep watch on individual drives and control what can or cannot be installed on them. No word on pricing, but Lockheed Martin is apparently ready to talk with any companies that are interested in using the drives.
I'd buy that for a dollar!
Unless it's got a defense mechanism that has terms "heat-seeking," "laser-designator," or "thermonuclear," I'll pass.
@(Unverified)
It might only be worth a dollar. But I am sure they are selling it over priced to the miltary.
you are NOT that important
@Eugene Action the party van wont catch me now!
Jose Jalapeno... on a stick!
@DirtyVegas
ROFL! He needs this to keep his shit secure from Ahkmed!!
"I will hack you!!!"
Becrypt have had this for a while, basically Ubuntu run from pre-encrypted flash drive. Nice idea for secure connections to Citrix and web browsing, but there's limits on other functions and installs. http://www.becrypt.com/emea/Products/trusted-client Becrypt were selling it real cheap, I guess you have to have a reasonably sized army before LM will talk
@baxtersoup I wouldn't doubt if it was the same "type" of solution here.
@baxtersoup
Its essentially the same @Andir now where can I get a reseonably sized army from?
Becrypt have had this for a while, basically Ubuntu run from pre-encrypted flash drive. Nice idea for secure connections to Citrix and web browsing, but there's limits on other functions and installs. http://www.becrypt.com/emea/Products/trusted-client Becrypt were selling it real cheap, I guess you have to have a reasonably sized army before LM will talk
Very cool. I envision this being common place in the next decade. I have to carry this big RFID access card... why not stick a 16gb microSD card in it and make it a portable computer? (Terminal sold seperately)
@Smurf I'm assuming it's a USB bootable Linux.
@Andir
That's probably the built in "virus protection". Any linux nerd with a flash drive can make one of these, out of any Linux distro.
@Smurf How ironic that their IT department bans flashdrives.
PenDriveLinux is similar and free.....
www.pendrivelinux.com
ChromeOS
Make your own:
http://www.debuntu.org/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-on-usb-bar
I don't think I would trust something like that from Lockheed. . I mean Google makes a phone and lockheed makes a flash drive
.what's this world coming to...next well see mcdonalds making home entertainmemt systems
@Jvalen I like to Super Size my OLED screen please.
@Jvalen
if you can't trust Lockheed Martin then we're all fucked
@acme64 i guess a flash drive isn't so bad when they start to make personal computers then i'm going to question their motives which I'm sure isn't sinister.
@Jvalen
I guess if a company can make airships and laser weapons, they can handle making a USB drive. Like I bought a fan from Honeywell, cause I figured if they can make smart cluster bombs and nuclear missiles, making a fan is pretty trivial.
@Jvalen
Just remember, they worked with Intel to make the i740 graphics card
This is pretty nice and while similar "free" alternatives exist, I highly doubt they are aimed at the level of security offered with this particular thumb drive (except maybe for baxtersoup's alternative).
Plus this is for the lazy who want pre-configured goodness.
Just use http://www.mojopac.com/ basically does the same thing, tho its a bit limited. Tho it is free.
PC means personal computer, not just my OS and personal files, there's no CPU/GPU/Monitor on that stick, I still need a PC to use it.
@htd
I don't see this as being too far off.
Think how small mobile phones are and how close they are becoming PCs.
I don't think it's some fantasy to imagine a small portable device housing a CPU, free disk space, and GPU.
Imagine internet cafes with just a monitor (with built in USB port) and a wireless keyboard that can do most tasks just by plugging this device in. I think that'd be pretty neat.
@HypnoticSilence : Maybe it is close, but this device is not it. I agree with htd ( apart from the monitor/input device thing), the title implied a self-contained personal computer.
they should have made it look like the SR71..that would have been cool.
@Complex You probably get it for free with an F-35, so you can backup your cockpit preference settings, view flight data on your computer or download enemy targeting data to the plane, etc.
Yeah, who hasn't done this with Knoppix for years already...
Where's the button that activates the wings and lazorz?
Wait is this something that has a CPU in it or does it plug into a computer terminal with all the proper hardware ready to go? If the latter, whats the point?
Hm. I'd love to have something like this that has:
1) 5 partitions (android-ARM boot, Android-x86 boot, Ubuntu-x86 boot, Maemo-ARM boot, data partition)
2) shells that you can plug it into (tablet mobile phone, qwerty mobile phone, MID, tablet, netbook, laptop, nettop, all-in-one, etc.)
@johnkzin
Quit being a fucking nerd.
@STFUHOE
Exactly what kind of non-nerd would even be remotely interested in "PC on a USB stick"?
Really, try it on your next date and see how blank her stare gets...
@STFUHOE
If you're not a gadget-geek/nerd, why are you even on this site?
@johnkzin
Personally, I'd remove Maemo, add OS X, and Windows 7 to your list. I bet it could be done too, with some kind of bootloader on the stick. Or a set of them.
This has been designed for corporate use. For all you who think something like this would be cool, but don't care about the extreme security it provides, may I suggest any Iomega hard drive starting this year(http://ww2.iomega-web.com/vclone/). There are plenty of alternatives, but Lockheed is simply bringing all of them together. The security and build quality of IronClad thumb drives + mobile virtualization. The virtualization is most likely based upon VMWare's MVP(Mobile Virtualization Platform). Iomega's solution is based on Parallels. Again a separation can be seen in the target of the 2 products, one being very consume oriented(Parallels) and the other very enterprise oriented(VMWare).
Lockheed Martin is a HUGE IT contractor. They staff a bunch of the CDC, etc. so a product based on likely work done to standardize PC service delivery for corp/gov clients isn't too far-fetched. Tax dollars at work to fund profit-making whatevers...?
@hreed123engadget
i think that comes with the territory whenever the .gov contracts out work. But in return, you get superior products churned out much faster and more efficiently than if a single government research agency tried to do everything. There's a reason the US military is the most technologically advanced - look at all the cutting edge technologies we have, and then look at how many of them have some private company's logo on it as well. Most of them do.
The flipside of such a large military industrial complex are the large dangers inherent in such a standing industry. But, that goes beyond the scope of Engadget comment boards.
I demand that all my Lockheed Martin products shoot missiles.
Its certainly not for military use. My reserve center just banned the use of flash drives like these on base. Too many of them get lost/stolen with valuable data on them. Having Lo-Jack on it would be useful.
The IronClad usb key is based on the technology by a startup called MokaFive. Its basically a virtualized Windows OS running on VMware player (or vBox) so that it can be plugged into any PC and ran without setup. What MokaFive does is creating a management layer that administrators an remotely manage the virtual OS with task like update, lock image or even kill image. On top of IronKey's build-in encryption, the OS image is also encrypted, and image must "check in" with the host server within a preset time frame, or the image will be killed. There's alot more feature, check out mokafive.com, its pretty cool stuff
This isn't surprising to me, my dad used to work for Lockheed untill February 2009, and that place is suuuuper high security.
I don't think it's weird that they're making it, but why are they selling to to consumers?
@nicksilvestri
Because they can't sell it to the government (DoD) now. There is a new information assurance rule that no thumb drives can be used anymore. Whoops!
We were using the Kingston Traveler's Thumb Drive in our DHS division for USB drives. With the recent security issues on those models I am sure LM saw a golden egg opportunity present itself when the government goes "Oh poop our drives are broken we need something more secure"
DOD may not use them but plenty of other government offices do.
"We never forget who we're working for"
Does'nt that sound fishy at all?
These are just Flash RAM drives with encryption. To accomplish a virtual machine bootable on any PC or OS X without an install, use QEMU without acceleration.
What you do is set up one startup script for a PC, and a different one for the Q version of QEMU on OS X, set up as a self-contained "package". In this way, you don't even need admin access to do an install on the host system. All you need is a USB port, and execution privileges (a normal login).
The result is a complete environment you can pull up on any x86 system. It's state persists from one session to the next, meaning you can do installs and customizations of your environment. When you're done using it, just shutdown and eject the drive. Nothing is left on the host machine.
Using an encrypted drive like IronKey just adds a nice security measure so that if you lose your USB thumb-drive, the person who picks it up can't get to your system.
If anyone is interested in knowing how to set one of these things up, post your response here. I've been thinking about documenting the process. It has totally changed my work-flow.
@Mike Levin
I'm interested. I don't have a high capacity USB drive at the moment, but I am "into" VM's. Always was interested on how you get it to run without installing something on the host.
mel dot myers at live dot com
Thanks