A view month ago I ordered at Crowdsupply this amazing little usb-device. This usb-device is a little computer(800MHz ARM® processor, 512MB RAM). I ordered it with a pre-installed Linux SD-Card. And finally they got enough money to produce and ship it.
Here are some facts(from the website):
- Freescale i.MX53 ARM® Cortex™-A8 800Mhz, 512MB DDR3 RAM
- USB host powered (<500 mA) device with compact form factor (65 x 19 x 6 mm)
- ARM® TrustZone®, secure boot + storage + RAM
- microSD card slot
- 5-pin breakout header with GPIOs and UART
- customizable LED, including secure mode detection
- excellent native support (Android, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch Linux)
- USB device emulation (CDC Ethernet, mass storage, HID, etc.)
- Open Hardware & Software
The usb-armory can be used for example as a “password-manager”, encrypted usb-storage, ssh-proxy, tor-proxy, pen-testing-tool, security token, and so on..
My first impressions:
As soon as I connected it with my Linux-Notebook I got a new network interface called “usb0”. I just configured this interface on my Linux-Notebook and set the IP-Address to 10.0.0.100. The pre-installed Linux-Image on my USBArmory has 10.0.0.1:
dr@tardis:/# ifconfig usb0 10.0.0.10 netmask 255.255.255.0
dr@tardis:/# ping 10.0.0.1
PING 10.0.0.1 (10.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.297 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=0.259 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_req=3 ttl=64 time=0.234 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_req=4 ttl=64 time=0.190 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_req=5 ttl=64 time=0.241 ms
^C
--- 10.0.0.1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.190/0.244/0.297/0.036 ms
Now I can connect via SSH. But it’s not the only way to gain a shell. There is a Webshell listening on port 4200. So I can use a Browser to connect to”https://10.0.0.1:4200/” and open a shell. This is very useful, because maybe I use this device on foreign computers and there might not be a ssh-client but a web-browser.
USB-Host-Adapter
I also ordered a USB-Host-Adapter. This device transforms the USB-Armory into a standalone computer powered by a micro-USB-Cable and provides a USB-Port for Wifi, USB-keyboard or anything else.
All in all I am super happy with my new toy and I am going to play with it. It’s a powerful device and I can imagine that I am going to have a lot of fun with it.
Some useful links:
- https://github.com/inversepath/usbarmory/wiki/Starting
- https://www.crowdsupply.com/inverse-path/usb-armory-open-source-usb-stick-computer
- http://dev.inversepath.com/download/usbarmory/
