A few years ago my laptop screen shattered and I had to turn in a paper that week I had saved on it for a college class. Looking around my area I found the only quick solution was a data retrieval tool at Best Buy for about $200 a pop. Instead I ended up pulling the hard drive out and installing it in another machine(which was a hassle and a time waste in comparison). However, I had an idea, why not make a easy to use home device that can be sold in stores and through retailers, that does the same job(data retrieval) .
Over the next 2 weeks I put together a small file, and stored it in a thumb drive. Upon clicking the .bat file in the thumb drive, the code would essentially go through the hard drive and copy all files ending in a .jpeg .txt .pdf .py etc(whatever you wanted) over to the thumb drive. In a few hours of coding I made essentially a dumbed down Best Buy tool on a $2 thumb drive. While this solves a the problem if the computer screen is working, if you cant see anything(like the lock/logon screen) it is a problem. So, this is where i'm stuck.
My idea for its development is as follows though;1. I can use a program called KonBoot to bypass the lock screen on startup by altering the shell code to disregard the need for authentication. This fixes the problem of needing to bypass the logon screen in the event you're using this tool as a system admin or the computer isn't yours. 2. I want this process to run automatically, in that I dont want the user to have interact with the .bat file at all. Essentially, I want it to be plug n play so the file just begins combing through all directories and downloading all files as soon as its plugged in. 3. I want there to be multiple versions of this device. For sure, I want one with a GUI interface that is simple to use (allows you to select certain file types, copy whole directories, etc). Additionally, I want a quite more stealthy version for pen testing (which from my internship in DC, I know there is a huge market for this type of tool). With this version, I want it to run as silent as possible(plug n run). Im aware there's a way of transferring smaller files without raising any flags from the CPU, I just dont know how. I would also like this device to be registered as a keyboard when it is plugged in for example, to seem less suspicious.There are a few other ideas I have to tack on here. In these 2 instances of it alone, I can market it to both civilians as a easy to use GUI based tool and the private sector for penetration testing.
As far as marketing to civilians goes, I think this is a home run. Especially from a price point against competitors. Take best buy for example... if this tool is put on thumb drives( which cost next to nothing in bulk) the end user can have a tool which can be employed a infinite amount of times for lets say $45, verse Best buy at $200 a pop. To me, even a amateur marketing team can make that appealing to both seasoned and new computer users. As for the Pen testing version, well thats self explanatory. Ultimately though, I feel like this is an amazing idea and can have a lot of practical uses, I just dont have the knowledge or time to see it though. If coded and marketed correctly, this should be a home run.
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