Prevent the guest account from accessing a particular flash usb pen drive key?

Question

My pen drive is very important to me. I have a 32GB one, with Ubuntu 12.04 on it. On then pen drive, I created two partitions; one ext4 for Ubuntu (5GB) and the other partition is fat32, so that windows can access it too, with restrictions.

Windows users without my permission can't see nor modify anything in my fat32 partition. However, when I boot from my pen drive and log in with guest account, I can see the fat32 partition and do whatever with it, delete it if i want.

I just want to restrict access to that particular pen drive (only for the guest account). I also don't want to disable the guest account, because if somebody boots from my pen drive and just want to check mail or save an image from the Internet to their own pen drive, they need to be able to see/mount their pen drive.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 02 '12 at 08:30

It is important to understand that these permissions are only enforced when the version of ubuntu on the pen drive is running. If I were to connect this pen drive to another computer I would be able to read any data on the pen drive, regardless of the permissions set in the file system.

If someone else has physical access to the pen drive, only encryption of the contents will give you any protection. (Note that this applies to a desktop computer too - if someone has physical access then they can remove the hard disk and examine its entire contents on another machine, or boot from their own USB stick - the operating system only enforces permissions on files when it is running).

You might want to look at a cross-platform encryption tool like TrueCrypt to store your data.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 01 '12 at 08:47

0

Select contains of your drive. right click on it choose permissions. You can remove or give permission for data to any user or you also for read, write or execution of your data.

answered Aug 01 '12 at 08:47

KK Patel

19,753

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Nov 23 '13 at 15:54

0

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ubuntu-tiphow-to-disable-guest-account-in-ubuntu-12-04precise.html

The link allows you to disable the guest access feature in Ubuntu to such that you could prevent access. You are good to go now...

edited Nov 23 '13 at 15:54

guntbert

13,475

answered Nov 23 '13 at 11:13

aRvInD

1

Prevent the guest account from accessing a particular flash usb pen drive key?

3 Answers3