Re: Hard Drive Destruct System?

From: Casper H.S. Dik (Casper.Dik_at_Sun.COM)
Date: 11/28/04 

Date: 28 Nov 2004 13:14:29 GMT

adykes@panix.com (Al Dykes) writes:

>Offhand I can't see any problem with en/decrypting data in 512 byte
>blocks as sectors are read/written to disk. The electronics on the
>disk drive can do this, when enabled with a PIN from the user. A
>custom BIOS would be necessary to prompt the user for the PIN at boot
>time. No PIN, no data. Blow up the chip that has the crypto key in
>it and your data's gone.

>I've never worked with the IBM system, and it's possible the disk just
>has a spin-up password. This would effectivly prevent you and me from
>stealing the data, but not stop the Bad Guys that can read data from
>platters, assuming that's still possible.

As far as I know, the IBM drives have a spin-up password; they cannot
be recovered, the IBM documentation says:

    "If you forget your hard disk password, there is no way to reset your
    password or recover data in the hard disk drive. Neither an IBM
    authorized reseller nor IBM marketing representative can make the hard
    disk drive usable."

Some people take hardware security seriously.

But there are companies claiming to be capable of recovery:

        http://www.nortek.on.ca/hard_disk_password.html

The data is not likely to be encrypted; such encryption would slow
the drives down considerably and would probably have export control
consequences which IBM could do well without at the time it originally
started shipping the drives.

Casper 

-- 
Expressed in this posting are my opinions.  They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.
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