MojoPac was an

application virtualization Application virtualization is a software technology that encapsulates computer programs from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. A fully virtualized application is not installed in the traditional sense, although it is stil ...

product from RingCube Technologies. MojoPac turns any

USB 2.0 Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

storage device 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 Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...

and

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a marketin ...

, and it is also high performance enough to run popular PC Games such as

World of Warcraft ''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the ''Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of Warcraft'' takes place within the world of Azeroth ...

Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before being ...

and

Half-Life 2 ''Half-Life 2'' is a 2004 first-person shooter game developed by Valve. It was published by Valve through its distribution service Steam. Like the original ''Half-Life'' (1998), ''Half-Life 2'' combines shooting, puzzles, and storytelling, and ...

. The RingCube website is currently forwarded to Citrix, which has apparently purchased the company and discontinued MojoPac.

Usage

To initially set up 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 (subject to how the host PC is configured). 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 installs most applications (including

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the indu ...

) 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, they exit MojoPac and eject 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 Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

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, although administrator rights are required if "MojoPac Usher" has not been installed on the host PC. When the portable storage device is disconnected from the computer, there is no personal information left behind on the computer.

Requirements

*Requires Windows XP Home or Pro; Windows 2000 is not supported, though Vista was planned to be supported in the near future (it never was). *Requires Administrator access. A special version, MojoPac Usher, can be run in Universities or other locked down environments if the administrator is present to log in once. A Limited User version was under development.

Security

MojoPac does not include features to encrypt the data on the USB drive, but does have 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, this is no different from a default Windows XP installation and MojoPac can be used together with

OTFE Disk encryption is a technology which protects information by converting it into unreadable code that cannot be deciphered easily by unauthorized people. Disk encryption uses disk encryption software or hardware to encrypt every bit of data that g ...

software such as

FreeOTFE FreeOTFE is a discontinued open source computer program for on-the-fly disk encryption (OTFE). On Microsoft Windows, and Windows Mobile (using FreeOTFE4PDA), it can create a virtual drive within a file or partition, to which anything written is a ...

TrueCrypt TrueCrypt is a discontinued source-available freeware utility used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file, or encrypt a partition or the whole storage device (pre-boot authentication). On 28 May ...

to provide any desired strong

encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...

and

plausible deniability Plausible deniability is the ability of people, typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command, to denial, deny knowledge of or responsibility for any damnable actions committed by members of their organizational hierarchy. Th ...

(just as Windows XP can). A MojoPac device secured using this type of software is reasonably safe in the case of theft. Because of the virtualization performed by MojoPac, applications running inside the MojoPac environment cannot (generally) modify the host. For example, all the browsing history for

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

and other browsers is 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. However, it is possible for a user to modify MojoPac's system files, which are then reflected to the same system files of the host PC, so the current level of isolation between the virtual environment and the host PC is not as strong as provided by full machine virtualization technologies like VMware. RingCube has stated this is a known bug which will be addressed in a future version of MojoPac.Lowcode Platform
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References

External links

*{{Official, www.mojopac.com Virtualization software Portable software suites

Usage

Requirements

Security

See also

References

External links