Kingston confirms security flaw in its ‘flawless’ USBs

Kingston Technology has admitted a number of its "100 per cent secure" USB drives aren't as safe as the company first thought.

In a posting on its website, Kingston confirmed that it's DataTraveler BlackBox, DataTraveler Secure Privacy Edition and DataTraveler Elite Privacy Edition products had all been affected by a security flaw.

The statement said that a "skilled person with the proper tools and physical access to the drives may be able to gain unauthorised access to data contained on the USB drives" but the company held back from giving anymore information.

Back in March 2006, Kingston launched the secure drives with 128-bit hardware-based encryption, followed by 256-bit, claiming it was the first 100 per cent secure USB device on the market.

The company has asked customers to send back their devices for a factory update but not until they have backed up data and then deleted it.

UK customers should contact Tech Support on 01932 738950. To find numbers for other countries click here.

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.