Richard J. Prinz

As everybody knows “Make Backups (more than one!!) of your data!!” nowadays is as important as gaining enough sleep or eating healthy. But sometimes you are completely unprepared. This is exactly what happened to me a few days ago. A hard disk with very important source code for a project I’m currently working on suddenly stops working and the last backup was … some weeks ago.

So what to do? Besides calling me self a jackass I had to find a way to get back the data. After researching prices of some professional data rescue companies I came to the conclusion that trying to recover the data myself (and rewriting the lost source code in case my rescue attempt fails) would be cheaper and faster (project deadline is approaching with rapid steps).

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Using a YubiKey (or other USB security token) to unlock physical things.

While researching locks and lockable storage for a new premise I found lots of LockPicking information about how to hack and break into products from even renowned companies. It’s not only a waste of money buying “high security” products which could be unlocked by just a paper clip like shown in this Video but might also be dangerous.

At the same time I use my YubiKey daily with IT systems and services. So I thought to myself:

“Why not use a YubiKey as a key for physical storage/property?”.

So I started another research, if, how and with how much effort a lock for physical things could be designed which uses a standard USB security token as key.

Fortunately it was easy to design such a lock. The outcome is the “StickLock” (short “SL”) described in this project.

Note: Latest software could be found on GitHub.

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