Hi,

I have a inode/chardevice USB flash drive. The files on the USB are hidden and it holds a license key for a diagnostic software. I would like to clone the USB but it shows up as hiddev, I have tried using dd to copy it but still no progress.

Please help me

If it comes up as hiddev it is probably not a USB flash drive with a code saved in a file. It is a HID (human interface device) which is usually for things like keyboards and mice but can also be used to automatically type the code into your diagnostic software as if you had typed it yourself on the keyboard.

This code may also change every 30 seconds or so which means you can't make a copy of it, you would need to get another one of these USB devices from the manufacturer.

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes I see that it is a HID. Is there a way for me to see the code on the device? If so would I then be able to make a copy?

I am sure that this would be against the the end user license agreement and it is also against the rules of this forum.

1 members found this post helpful.

Basically, these devices aren't "a disk drive" at all, even though to the software they may be made to look like one. Much like the /proc filesystem on Linux, the files don't really exist. Instead, there is some kind of secure cryptographic device, usually driven in-part by a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) and also other things like public crypto-keys, which the licensed software is able to read and verify. Even if you could read the data off the device at any particular time, it would be of no use to you. And that's why those devices are built that way!

We have digital license keys, they look like thumb drives, in reality they are chips with write/execute contents only, read is not possible.