Crypteks USB offers physical lock and AES hardware encryption

There’s a Kickstarter campaign going that might interest those who carry sensitive data and swooned over Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code — if it comes to fruition, the Crypteks USB drive will combine both a physical lock as well as 256-bit AES hardware encryption. The drive itself is sealed inside an anodized aluminum cylinder with five rings containing all the letters of the alphabet; all you have to do to remove the drive is enter your password. Once the drive is removed, you can reset the password by removing and re-orienting the rings in the position of your choice. Even after the drive is removed from its shell, it’s still secured by the aforementioned AES encryption, a standard currently in use by the US government.

Not surprisingly, all this security won’t come cheap — as part of the Kickstarter campaign, a pledge of $130 gets you the 8GB model, while $160 will get you 16GB (Crypteks will also offer a 4GB version at a future date). The funding campaign will run through December 23rd, and the goal is to ship drives by Christmas. We’ll see if that deadline is met — the road from render to reality is fraught with peril.