U3-autorun

I was exploring how to best integrate PortableApps, TrueCrypt and a U3-ready USB
to create something that performs like an IronKey.  While I didn't get "there", I
did make enough progress to post something to GitHub.

The "nice" feature of U3-ready USB sticks is that they present a portion of their
memory as a CD-ROM, enabling the use of autorun and autoplay features that were
disabled (and rightly so) in Windows 7 and later service packs in other versions
of Windows.

Scanning the web (as of Feb 2012) I found a number of different threads, lots
of different tools and workflows (some accurate, some not, some mature, some not,
some written obviously by blackhats, and some not), and in all cases, nothing 
tidy and "makeable."

At present this project encapsulates a make workflow so that from the command line
all the steps necessary to rebuild ISO images for the CD-ROM portion of U3 sticks
are automated.  I gathered the necessary tools, some examples in other languages,
URL to sites I found interesting, and other examples that might serve useful for
someone interested in extending this work.

At present (Feb 2012) this project is really proof-of-concept because it doesn't
use readily-available tools, etc.  But - it does work on my machine ;-)

The model:
- U3 USB stick has 2 partitions, a U3-CDROM and a regular removeble drive
- U3 USB partition contains an autorun.inf plus EXE file.
- When run, the EXE file on the U3-CDROM:
  - looks for mounted removeable drives,
  - looks for INI file in root of these drive,
  - using info in INI file does stuff (like starting Portable apps) on drive

The workflow:
1) update the EXE file source and rebuild EXE
2) update the files to be burned ISO-style to U3 CDROM partition on stick
3) create ISO
4) "burn" ISO to U3-CDROM memory

The tools:
1) I used perl for the EXE on the CDROM.  My branch also includes some
   similar CPP code from another project similarily titled U3-autorun.
2) I used PerlApp to convert the perl file to a standalone EXE.
3) "mkisofs" is used to create an ISO image of a folder in the branch
4) u3-tools is used to transfer the ISO image to the U3-CDROM partition
   on the stick.
5) The entire workflow is captured in a Makefile, make all automates
   steps 1-4.

The issues:
1) autorun and autoplay are quite dangerous and their behaviors are
   not longer consistent across platforms.  See WikiPedia for "autorun" 
   and "autoplay."  You'll get way more than you wanted to know!
2) I'm a perl-boy with money, so my EXE is actually written in Perl
   and "compiled" into a stand-alone EXE using ActiveState tools.
3) Some software (e.g., Citrix VM and others) mess with Autoplay and Autorun
   because of the need to share USB ports over the VM connection.  This 
   really messes with the plug-and-play autorun behavior.
4) I still haven't figured out how IronKey exposes their hidden
   partition ONLY AFTER a password is entered.  Lots of black magic no doubt,
   and I don't have the time to reverse engineer it.

Possible next actions:
1) get the CPP version of the U3-Autorun working (Andy Walker - Thanks!)
   See:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/u3-autorun/
2) Keep portable apps community in the loop:
   See:  http://portableapps.com/node/27625
3) Figure out how IronKey hides their partition and exposes it on-the-fly.
4) Have fun with it!

Anyway ... its a start.

John Leonard, 2/25/2012