MojoPac

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MojoPac is a software virtualization product from RingCube Technologies. RingCube Technologies was founded in 2004 and is based in Mountain View, California. MojoPac turns any USB2 storage device, such as iPods, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, USB-enabled cell phones, and USB-enabled digital cameras, into a portable computing environment. The term "MojoPac" is used by the company to refer to the software application, the virtualized environment running inside this software, and the USB storage device that contains the software and relevant applications. MojoPac supports popular applications such as Firefox and Microsoft Office, and it is also high performance enough to run popular PC Games such as World of Warcraft and Half-Life 2.

1 Usage
2 Features
3 Requirements
4 Security
5 Comparison with other mobility and virtualization solutions
6 External links

[edit] Usage

To initially setup the MojoPac device, the user runs the installer and selects a USB device attached to the system. Once MojoPac is installed, it creates an executable in the root of that device along with an autorun file that gives the user the option of starting the MojoPac environment automatically when the device is plugged in. Once this application is started, a new Windows Desktop (with its own wallpaper, icons, shell, etc.) is started up in the virtualized MojoPac environment. Any application that runs inside this environment runs off the USB device without affecting the filesystem of the host. A user install most applications (including Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Firefox) on the portable storage device by simply running the installer inside this environment. The user can switch between the host environment and the MojoPac environment by using the MojoBar at the top of the screen. Once the user is done with the applications, he just exits out of MojoPac and ejects the USB device.

To run the applications on a different computer, the user does not need to reinstall the application. The user can plug the portable storage device into any Windows XP computer. All the user's settings, applications, and documents function the same irrespective of which computer the portable storage device is connected to. The computer does not need any special applications or drivers installed to use MojoPac.

When the portable storage device is disconnected from the computer, there are no traces left behind on the computer.

[edit] Features

Supports the majority of popular applications and games. [1]
Works on any USB2 storage device including flash drives, external hard drives, and iPods.[2]

[edit] Requirements

Requires Windows XP Home or Pro. Vista will be supported in the near future [3]
Requires Administrator access. A special version can be run in Universities or other locked down environments. A Limited User version is under development. [4]

[edit] Security

MojoPac does not include features to encrypt the data on the USB drive. It has a password protection system that prevents a person from starting up the MojoPac environment. All the files on the USB drive do not have any additional encryption which is problematic if the MojoPac device is lost. However, MojoPac has support for running inside a TrueCrypt volume on a USB device. Since TrueCrypt has strong encryption with plausible deniablity, a MojoPac device using TrueCrypt is safe in the case of theft.

Because of the virtualization performed by MojoPac, applications running inside the MojoPac environment cannot modify the host. For example, all the browsing history for Internet Explorer and other browsers are stored on the USB device rather than the host. Similarly, if a malicious program tries to delete the C:\Windows directory inside MojoPac, the files on the USB device are deleted, but the files on the host machine will remain.

[edit] Comparison with other mobility and virtualization solutions

U3 and Ceedo both require modifications to the target applications to get them to run off the external device. This means that they don't support certain proprietary applications such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. However, U3 and Ceedo can run without Administrator privileges while MojoPac currently cannot. MojoPac also has a virtualization layer that prevents applications from writing to the host machine while U3 and Ceedo require the application to be "unobtrusive".

Moka5 and Portable ACE use VMWare to virtualize the application. This means they require the user to install the VMWare drivers on the host while MojoPac does not require the user to install drivers or make any other permanent changes to the host machine. Because of MojoPac's higher level of virtualization, it is possible to run the latest games and multimedia applications which do not run Portable ACE. MojoPac also has a smaller footprint since the portable device does not require a full Windows installation. However, this also restricts the operating systems that MojoPac supports to Windows XP only while moka5 and ACE can run any operating systems on top of the Windows desktop. By virtualizing at the hardware level, moka5 and ACE provide a much higher level of security and data protection.