Tamper-Resistant USB Storage Device using BLAKE3 Hashing

The rapid growth in data portability via USB flash drives has introduced severe security concerns, including unauthorized access, data leakage, malware injection, and physical tampering attacks. While traditional solutions focus primarily on encryption for data confidentiality, they often neglect critical aspects such as real-time tamper detection, automated operational security, and irreversible data destruction mechanisms required for high-assurance environments like military intelligence, critical infrastructure, and classified research storage. This paper presents a tamper-resistant USB storage device using BLAKE3-derived AES encryption, RSA digital signatures , and automation scripts to ensure confidentiality, authenticity, and tamper response. The system uses BLAKE3 for deriving high-entropy encryption keys, ensuring speed and cryptographic strength, while RSA signatures guarantee file authenticity across devices. Automation scripts trigger decryption upon USB insertion and encryption before ejection, minimizing human error. A tamper detection mechanism continuously scans for unauthorized files or signature mismatches and erases all data immediately upon detection, preventing exposure. Additionally, the paper proposes a future hardware kill- switch upgrade using microcontroller-controlled overvoltage pulses to physically destroy the NAND flash chip if tampering is detected, providing irreversible data destruction. Results demonstrate the system’s effectiveness in achieving robust USB security with seamless operational integration.