How To Head Off ATA HDD Password Abuse

An anonymous reader submits "German c't magazine has a story about abusing the security features of ATA hard disks. The bottom line is that almost all ATA hard disks in desktop PCs can be password-protected. However, on most desktop PCs, the BIOS does not support locking this option -- so viruses or malware could set a random password, making any data unreadable unless recovered by professionals."

Comments

the word being "could"

[Anonymous Coward]

but when was the last highly destructive virus you saw ?

virus writers/skripterz have long since learnt, if you kill the host it is of no use to you, you achieve nothing

99% of viruses today are trojans because you can use your fancy stealth infection/propogation routines AND make a profit if you keep the host alive, locking a HD would be pointless and contrary to opinion most Virus writers are not stupid, misguided perhaps but not stupid

Re:why would you do this?

[darkwhite]

Why on earth would you want to password "protect" a hard drive? How would that be any better than properly encrypting your files?

Speed.

Only very sophisticated organizations have the means to lift data off a password-protected hard drive. Encryption, while more durable in that regard, sacrifices speed with every access to the files in question.