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The Always-Encrypted Firewire Hard Drive
ducman points to the announcement of an encrypted hard drive running on the MacNN website. The drive features a DES 64-bit/ 40bit key strength and "is intended for use by banks, insurance providers, government agencies, and those individuals with sensitive digital intellectual property. It supports the IEEE 1394a connectivity standard, in addition to USB 1.1 and 2.0. It offers data transfer rates over FireWire 400 of 100, 200, or 400 Mbps. The SuperGuard is expected to be available February 7." Sounds great -- but the USB key stuck in the back looks like a likely point of failure.
the key length is too short.
I recently switched from Mac OS 8 to OS X. The one thing I miss is PGPdisk (the most recent freely available version doesn't run on OS X). I've been using Disk Copy encrypted images which use AES 128-bit encryption but I don't know quite how that compares to PGPdisk. So all in all I could definitely use a better encrypted drive solution.
One of these puppies would be a neat alternative. Probably a bit costly though.
Encrypted loopback devices on linux and bsd (and MacOS) are easier and cheaper.
And more secure IMHO.
Does my mp3 collection count?
http://metapundit.net
And it only took 6.4 seconds to crack into once the harddrive was hooked up to a standard PC.
Anyone in here actually read Applied Cryptography? This was 1995 when it was published, and especially for bank use, you'd NEVER use anything less than a 128 bit key.
Also, did they say DES or 3DES? Hasn't DES been cracked?
OS/X can be made to support it ... AFAIK Darwin does.
- Make a big file image, format it, mount it via loopback, encrypt everything that goes on it.
DES has been replaced by Rijndael (AES)in the govt. Or at least that's what's supposed to happen, DeS is no longer secure enough. I would bet that with the huge ammounts of data stored on a disk differential techniques would make it a snap to get the key. What's worse is an easy to crack crypto system that you believe in is worse than no crypto system at all since you're likely to store data on it that you might not store otherwise.
Patrik
----------
Just your ordinary BOFH
http://killertux.org
Make a big file image, format it, mount it via loopback, encrypt everything that goes on it.
That's what encrypted DiskCopy images essentially are, just wrapped in a nice interface. It's actually a pretty neat system.
The ACs in this thread are correct. 40 bit encryption isn't going to keep anyone but a casual snooper out of your data.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
From the article:
*Device driver free, operating system independent
*Microsoft Windows98 SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Mac OS compatible
First off, how can it be OS independent and have a list of compatible OS's? If it's a hardware-based solution, then how can some OS's not work with it?
An encrypted drive is a cool idea, but i would much rather use CFS (crypted file system) on a regular drive than this. DES offers no security to the people who want your data.
If you want to prevent someone from getting your data, just buy a Western Digital drive. No one will be able to recover it!
Karma: Excellent (In Soviet Russia, karma pimps YOU)
The people who designed this hard disk are confused about how DES works. First of all, DES has a 56-bit, not a 64-bit key. Second of all, the days of being forced to use 40-bit encryption are, thankfully, over.
If one is going to all of the effort to encrypt a hard disk, why will they encrypt it using only Single DES? It is possible to build a single-DES cracker for under $10,000 US; the 56-bit key which single DES has to offer is just not long enough.
They would have been much better off encrypting this unit with AES, which uses Rijndael to encrypt files. Rijndael has a key size between 128 and 256 bits long, which can not be brute forced with current technology. Rijndael is also more efficient than DES when implemented in software.
Also, security is only as strong as its weakest link. If the hard disk is always readable when the key card is attached, then great care must be taken to detatch and hide the key card. Far better security can be obtained by a system which asks for a passphrase. Ideally, have a system which needs both the key card and the passphrase.
While I think this is a good idea, I think one is better off with the kernel patches which allow one to encrypt filesystems in Linux.
(For windows and Mac users, sorry, I use neither so can not help you)
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Wow. Not only does it have a silvery case, and and the blue stripe, but it comes with a pretty purple keychain! Now if only I could figure out why it came with the drive, and what it is for...
YarrRrr
Why would they just release a hard drive based on Firewire 400 when the 800 just came out? Wouldn't it be better to embrace the new tech?
On the other hand, they probably don't want to force people to buy Apple's high end stuff to use their drive: they aren't Apple, after all.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Part of the security of this device is the fact that you shouldn't let it get into unwanted hands. Yes, I agree the encryption standard is weak as hell. This is a first generation technology, so give it a break. I think the weak encrypion was compromise since, as many have pointed out, the hard drive is rather slow and it has to encrypt things...
I'll bet there are other companies working on a similar technology, I won't purchase one until I get variable key length and some decent speed specs.
-Code
---PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE---
"Now, where's the damn 'any' key?"
Encrypted disk images are really easy to use on OS X. They're encrypted using AES-128 (much more secure than the above hardware solution) and the performance is really quite good (fast enough to playback Quicktime movies from, even on a G3.) The Apple KBase entry on how to use them is here.
I really wish I could get a scsi version of this. Internal or external, external would be a lot easier, but some kind of internal addon board would be really good. I don't want to start an ide/scsi debate, but if I had data that was so important it needs that kind of security I would spend more than $200 on the drive.
Those who've criticised it for it's key length have missed a perhaps an important point, which its that it encrypts without consuming the processor power of the host machine and supports full bus transfer rates whilst encrypting. If your system processor load is a bit hairy, you perhaps don't want to add to it by trying to encrypt on the CPU.
Still, the same device with AES, 3DES or similar would be much better....maybe next time!!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It looks like as long as you've got the little dongle-thingy your drive will work; without it you're toast. So aside from any concern about the (only) 40-bit encryption, it seems like you'd have to make sure you hid the key (and not forget where you hid it). And if the key or its socket were to, ummmm... break or something (it's an external enclosure, so it could fall and the wires break), well you wouldn't have any data at all. And if the key got stolen, well then the thief only has to stick the thing into the drive and voila, there's your data.
I know a lot of corporate IT types will think this is exciting, especially as new data security laws keep hitting the books. Full time encryption seems pretty secure. And the price seems fair, especially since it seems to take any EIDE drive and secure it, and (quoted from the article), "capable of maneuvering 66MByte/ sec throughput without taking any system resources." Just don't lose that darn key! And maybe they'll develop an internal version that would be more secure from bumps, knocks, and falls.
Now, I've gotta get one of them new-fangled firewire (or USB 2.0) ports. And a hook to hang the little dongle from.
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
Starting with Win 2000 there is some sort of portable drive standard. I know the OS 10 has built in support as well.
I have a portable drive that when plugged into XP,2000, and OSX, it recognizes and mounts.
I have a driver disk for 98.
The company I bought it from told me that Linux didn't have built in support for it yet.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
From FireWire Depot page:
"...offers the military grade protection for your classified data."
Calling DES "military grade protection" is pretty close to a blatant lie.
Conceivably. Anyone who is running one of these drives without backups somewhere is even more insane than the folks running un-encrypted drives without backups. The backups themselves can easily be encrypted, so there's no need for major security risk. If your key dongles stop working or your drive fries, you'd better have some way of getting the bits back from outside, 'cause they're not coming from the platter.
OTOH, what is "64-bit/ 40-bit DES" supposed to be? Presumably this means the drive supports "40-bit watered-down DES keys" and "64-bit normal DES blocks". So I guess I'm wrong: this drive is designed to be break-inable in an emergency. Great. I'll wait until they offer 3DES or AES-128 options, thanks.
In the meantime, check out the BSD Cryptographic disk driver cgd: SW on-disk encryption at the block level.
'Cuz if you lose it, you can always bruteforce the encryption key anyway!
*ducks*
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
I recently wrote a silly little pam module and edited some files in gdm so I can login at my Red Hat linux terminal just by walking up and sticking in my Trek Thumbdrive.
One of the problems I've been wrestling with is that if anyone copies the file from the thumbdrive that it looks for, they can access my system as easily as I can. This hard drive would seem to suffer the same problem.
So, you say, protect the usb key just as a regular door key - you don't let people copy those. When I get my car serviced I even make a point to only hand them the car key alone, and not my apartment keys, etc.
But the small usb drives are so damn convenient as a replacement for floppies, and in fact I bought mine so I could throw files on it and take them to people's computers. But if I've got a login file on mine, the second I insert it into someone's computer I've theoretically lost security, because they could have a background process that copied off the file.
Now of course I'm not in the habit of trading files with miscreants and criminals, but you get the idea. If I'm building a process that's ostensibly for security it might as well be good.
But I haven't been able to find a way to reconcile the login issue with using the usb key elsewhere. As far as I can see, a perfect copy of my login file is as good as the original.
Look, I don't know why people make this more complicated than it needs to be.
Scramdisk (free) and Drivecrypt (cheap) both do on-the-fly en/decryption on regular hard drives. 1024 (and I think 2048) bit keys are available, with your choice of algorithm, and it's incredibly easy to use. For the truly paranoid, you can even use a fully encrypted disk on the fly for your entire OS.
I don't at all understand what the benefit of special hardware in the drive would be.
Perhaps IBM could put them to use next time an insurance company comes to them for colocation.
IBM has lost a hard drive containing the records of 180,000 clients of an insurance company. Details include "names, addresses, beneficiaries, social insurance numbers, pension values, pre-authorized checking information and mothers' maiden names", according to wire reports. Anything else? Oh yes, their bank account details.
A few days ago, I read in MacCentral that Weibetech had developed a AES based system to encrypt hard drives.
with 128-bit encryption and such.
Is there an encrypted filesystem I could use in Linux?
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Yeah, the encryption is weak, blah, blah, but that's beside the point. Isn't the data only as secure as the application that can access it? I guess these things are only used behind a firewall then, and they are just encrypted to protect against physical theft. They can't provide any security if the server is net facing can they? I mean, if Apache can access the data then just crack Apache above the level of drive access.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
DES is obsolete and would not be used for sensitive information by the US Military.
But they didn't say who's military ;-)
OS X users can use Disk Copy
t y. html
http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/securi
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WiebeTech is going to do the exact same thing, only with AES instead. http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/1/6/234015/4753
"40-bit DES", on the other hand, is either a well-designed crock or poorly-designed crock, which is pretty trivial to crack. The only reason to use such any 40-bit key is to comply with anti-Communist US export regulations that got dropped a few years ago, largely due to the EFF's DES-cracker machine and the internet distributed DES crack effort, both of which emphasized the weakness of 16-bit DES.
On a technical note, cracking well-designed 40-bit DES subsets is not 2**16 times faster than cracking 56-bit DES, or John Gilmore could do it in 3 minutes in his basement. DES has two main phases, a key-scheduling phase and an S-box phase, and the DES cracking efforts took advantage of some interesting work by Peter Trei on key scheduling, which found a search order that makes each key-schedule a simple modification of the previous one, instead if its normal relatively slow calculation. So a 40-bit DES crack might take 5-10 times as long per key as a 56-bit DES crack, unless the 40-bit subset was designed to avoid that. On the other hand, the EFF and Internet DES cracks were in 1998, and computers have gotten about 8-10 times faster since then...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I agree.
It costs next to nothing to implement GOOD encryption these days, and it would've been extremely simple to implement something extremely fast and secure like blowfish with a 256/448 bit password.
Implementing DES (slow in software, probably slow in their hardware) with a 40 bit password (VASTLY INSECURE) is basically saying upfront that they're more interested in preserving an easy attack on the system than ensuring that users' data is secure.
As other posters have mentioned, products like DriveCrypt (for the PC), can encrypt your partitions (or removable drives) with encryption that is for all intents and purposes absolutely unbreakable with a good passkey. Move up to something like DriveCrypt Pluspack and it will even encrypt the boot partition so the drive doesn't even get to the OS until a proper password has been entered (no software keyloggers possible).
There's simply no excuse for the kind of sloppy security that this company is trying to sell. Either they are trying to preserve access to their product for law enforcement purposes (hunt down them terrorists!), or trying to preserve access incase dumb users lock themselves out so their tech support can save the day.
Regardless, it's a waste of money.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
working for a government contracter, we are required to have more than 40 bits
Not all your bits have to come from the same source. For example, you can use 128 bit AES on the CPU followed by 40 bit DES on the drive, and you get 168 bit cipher strength barring any meet-in-the-middle[1] attacks.
[1] "Meet in the middle" in symmetric cryptanalysis has absolutely nothing to do with "man in the middle" in public-key infrastructure analysis.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't at all understand what the benefit of special hardware in the drive would be.
Perhaps an extra speed boost for those files that are sensitive but less sensitive than some other files? Crypto in the drive controller takes some load off the CPU.
Will I retire or break 10K?
40-bit is worse than a joke. This product is worthless.
So what if the security system on this harddrive is crackable? It doesn't mean this product is worthless.
I am sure that there are some situations where a product like this could be usefull.
In small towns smash and grab attacks happen all the time. Some petty thief steals a truck, drives it through a small business' store front, grabs the first 5 computers he can find, then drives away before the police arrive. A friend of mine who has an accounting practice was the victom of such a theft. He was a little upset that his last backup was 7 days ago but was more concerned about his clients data.
A smash-and-grabber might attempt to profit from information on a stolen harddrive if it is easily accessible but more likely than not he just wants to resell the merchandise and get rid of it.
While a 40bit encryption system is childsplay for some crackers it is most likely well beyond the ability of the local thieves in my neighborhood, and therefore is enough security to protect against some circumstances. If my friend had used a hard-drive like this he would probably have felt more secure about his lost hardware and data.
*walks by table while geek is getting caffeene*
*ZOINK*
This is more secure how exactly? It's even external so you don't hurt you back carrying it out the door.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
It uses software to allow the user to enter their passphrase from the keyboard. By the time of the expo, I had got the AES encryption working in the FireWire/IDE bridge but had only done the passphrase application for Mac OS X.
I've since got it working for Mac OS 9 (and earlier Mac OS versions). Windows and Linux remain before the product can ship. I don't expect either to be hard to do but they do require some work because they have to do some raw FireWire I/O.
I think it is best that I not comment any beyond this until FireWire Encrypt ships. But I think users will like what they see.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Dont always believe what the manufacturer is saying. They most probably meant that THEY dont support it in linux....
b /
for ieee1394a its called sbp2...
and linux DOES have support for it (the standard)... the problem is drives that DONT follow the standard....
http://www.linux1394.org/sbp2.html
for usb it called the mass-storage class... and same issue applies. Linux supports the STANDARD... which some manufacturers may not fully follow....
http://www2.one-eyed-alien.net/~mdharm/linux-us
--
Time is on my side
on your taste in music. I doubt that Britney Spears could be classified as "intellectual."
The dogcow says "Moof!"
The first is for the techies, the second confirms that it works with your operating system.
Somepeople will always ask for confirmation.
Read this paper to see why 40-bit keys are so bad.
However, to point to where the "military grade" security claim is coming from is the fact that in many military situations information is only needed to remain secure for minutes or a few hours. Unfortunately for FW Depot, that generally applies to wireless communications, not data stored on hard drives.
Maybe they are hoping that people will use it to courier sensitive data...but then they could just hire Johnny Mnemonic.
Yeah, bad product trying to meet ITAR regulations so they can export.
How does caching work anymore with an encrypted harddrive? One of the ideas behind caching is that if you access a piece of data, you will access nearby data as well. If your data is encrypted, one would hope that one could no longer ascertain what data is "nearby" to it.
From the features page:
# Microsoft Windows98 SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Mac OS compatible
Is that a feature? Or a limitation?
All I need for my "secure" alternative:
128 bytes of storage for some random data, to which I then append a password to and use as the encryption key in my crypto-loopback software implementation.
What do those "artistic" MAC users have that they need to keep secret anyway? This? Also mirrored (aka stolen) here
Get your own free personal location tracker
The only way you can really be safe is to have your data stored offshore in a country ala Kazaa with AES loopback encryption served over a vpn/coda connection routed to your friends server in Australia or Estonia, but which is actually sitting in the vacant house next door and accessing the internet through a nearby insecure 802.11 network and routing the traffic over vpn back to your own anonymous wireless connection.
Actually I'm sure you'd still get busted for you anime pron. There really is no feasible way to protect your information from everyone. If the government or a thief wants your information; they are going to throw you in jail or put a knife to your throat (respectively?).
So use encryption but don't count on it saving your ass.
Technically, DES does have a 64-bit key; it's just that eight of the key bits are used for parity checking and contribute nothing to the security of the algorithm, leaving the key with 56 bits of entropy. Many software implementations do away with the parity bits altogether and just use a raw 56-bit key, but the original spec called for 64-bit keys.
All this is, of course, IIRC.
It's just an enclosure for the drive, with a controller. Bring your own IDE.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I've recently been brainstorming about a P2P encrypted backup system. It would create automatic, encrypted backups using something like FreeNet or OceanStore to distribute redundant, encrypted backup fragments on other people's computers (and vice versa). I know P2P and security are almost oxymorons, but I think it could work securely.
Are there projects like this already? Or applications like it built on top of existing "overlay networks" like FreeNet?
cpeterso
The encryption isn't strong enough to keep out a skilled professional or a medium-sized group of annoyed amateurs. Therefore it offers no benefit over simply using its authentication token device as a password substitute, which is good enough to keep out unskilled amateurs. Meanwhile, the fact that they're even bothering to use 40-bit encryption, and that they're claiming it's military-grade security, and that it's good enough for several sets of users who might have actual security needs that this clearly isn't good enough for is a strong indication that these guys are at best technically clueless, or else blatantly dishonest. So you could buy one of these as a n IDE-to-Firewire/USB2 adapter, but I'd be worried about the thing losing my data as well as not keeping it secure when the CIA spooks sneak through my windows at night to steal the evidence I've collected about the Roswell aliens. Also, it's not subpoena-proof, because the key is (at least apparently) kept in the little key-frob, rather than being something you enter yourself, so any court that can force you to turn over the drive can force you to turn over the key-frob (as opposed to forcing you to tell them a password, which you can argue about.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you look at the actual specs, and the fact that the enclosure provides "Real-time... Encryption/ Decryption" all this enclosure does is to encrypt the data going out, and decrypt traffic coming in. The data on the actual hard drive does not seem to be encrypted. This enclosure is not going to stop anyone who bothers to actually open the case, remove the hard drive and put in their own enclosure/install it in their own computers. Nobody in their right mind should use this case, unless potential data thieves are going to nicely agree to keep the hard drive in its pretty enclosure, or the manufacturer adds a lock to the case.
The data on the actual hard drive does not seem to be encrypted. This enclosure is not going to stop anyone who bothers to actually open the case
This should be modded up. This thing is useless if it doesn't encrypt the data on the hard drive itself.
As other posters have noted, DES hcan easily be brute-forced because its key length is too short. It is also academically "broken," meaning that there is an attack faster than brute force.
A linear attack breaks DES in 2^40-something encryptions and 2^40-something known plaintexts (compare 1 known plaintext and 2^53 work for brute force). This means order of 10 terabytes of data, though, so we don't have to worry about it. Nobody will be using DES by the time anyone will be lazy enough to encrypt 10TB of data with a weak code.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
IF you wanted speed, wtf would you choose DES?
DES is bitching fast in hardware. What makes it slow in software is a bunch of switching bits around that doesn't really increase the security much. Easy to do in hardware: just cross the wires.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
This is a very important point. People don't usually haul around big hard drives, especially in bigger cases. Getting such hard drives stolen is rarely a point of failure (yeah, Canadian blah IBM blah blah). Much more of a risk is someone hacking it while it sits there connected to a computer with the dongle in.
Maybe something like this would be useful on a laptop, but encrypted loopback devices probably solve the problem better because the dongle could get lost, stolen etc. The only thing you have to worry about there is speed.
The biggest problem seems to be how to get the password into such a device. The next disk format / drive type spec should have optional encryption (of the whole drive) built into the spec to allow the password to be entered in a user-friendly manner. This would allow, say, encryption on CDs that is transparent to userland processes (not for copy protection, but for data protection).
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
If there's a physical key, a judge can make you give it up. I'll stick with software based encrypted disks, thanks anyway.
Win2k and above use DESX, an extension of DES that allows for an effective 120bit keylength when compared to plain DES. This allows reasonable security without the overhead of say 3DES.
DESX is broken, and not just academically. See Applied Cryptography for details (it's by Bruce, btw). Any instance of DESX that is as fast as DES is no more secure. It is only slightly better in strength vs performance than 3DES. It was a nice idea, but it didn't work out.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Reading is supported just fine ATM... Writing, on the other hand...