Fujitsu HDD with AES 256-bit Encryption

An anonymous reader writes "Fujitsu today updated its 2.5" 320GB hard disk drive with automatic hardware-based encryption to effectively secure data against theft or loss. According to Fujitsu, the MHZ2 CJ series is the first hard disk drive in the world to support the 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The drive implements the AES hardware encryption directly into the processor chip of the hard disk drive, resulting in more robust security and faster system performance than software-based encryption."

Comments

Is this really necessary?

[CRCulver]

Why have encryption at the hardware level when you can use e.g. Linux's crypto device-mapper tool? That also allows you to keep certain partition encrypted for privacy and other partitions unencrypted for performance.

Re:Is this really necessary?

[SanityInAnarchy]

However disk encryption on the whole can and will slow computers down, not significantly on modern computers but it does.

Really not significantly.

I haven't done any benchmarks of the speed of the drive itself, though I suspect it adds some latency. But the actual CPU usage is insignificant, compared to just about anything else you might do on the machine.

Seriously, ntfs-3g is going to be a MUCH bigger slowdown -- yet I've run ntfs-3g on top of dm-crypt, and it was still usable. Just did a quick "find /", and watched top, and while find itself occasionally climbed to 10% CPU (and on Linux, that means 10% of one core), the actual kernel crypt process never rose above 1%. It's now installing software updates, and the kernel crypto process just rose to 15%.

Another statistic: After four days of using this computer since the last full reboot (hibernating every now and then), one crypt process has accumulated a little over an hour of CPU time. The other has a little over a second.

Keep in mind, most software doesn't know how to take advantage of more than one core, so most people do actually have most of a core just sitting idle. That's why dual-core feels faster. If, under heavy load, the crypt process might -- maybe -- take 20% of that core, you're still not really going to feel it. And most truly CPU-intensive tasks, like games, video encoding, raytracing, etc, are not incredibly disk-intensive.

All in all, I think that outside of embedded disks, the CPU time we spend on our storage isn't really relevant. At this point, doing some simple lzo compression may actually improve performance, as you're still going to be faster than the disk is, and reading less raw data from the disk takes less time.

No, the real reason we're seeing this in hardware is because Windows will support it, and easily. I imagine there's a fair chance there's some BIOSes out there that do it in software, too.

Data Recovery?

[b.thompson]

My question/concern that I've always had with encryption is how can I recover from a crash? On a normal HD, if Windows won't boot (from a bad MBR or a failing drive), I could hook the drive up as a slave to another machine and start pulling data off of it. Is it possible to do this with any full drive encryption (software or hardware)?

I realize that being able to pull data when hooked up as a slave defeats the purpose of encryption, but I would hope that there is some way (maybe with a key created prior to the failure?) to recover.

Re:Data Recovery?

[TheThiefMaster]

It depends on where the encryption key is. If it's generated from the drive or stored on the drive, there's not really any security, you take the key with you to the new pc. If it's generated from the disk controller or motherboard serial number or similar, then you can't move it to another pc at all. If it has to be entered by a person then you have real security and the ability to move the drive to another machine if you want. However in that last case you have the annoyance of having to enter the key every boot.

Re:Key Storage?

[jandrese]

Where do you see that? The article is so light on details that you can't have gotten that from it. I thought it would just install a bios module that asks you for the password when it boots, and use that password until it is power cycled or whatever. That should even be compatible with the hibernate mode of most laptops, which would make it useful against laptop theft.

Storing the key on the drive with no authentication would be retarded, the only thing it would protect you from are those data recovery places that people who don't have proper backups use.

Re:How does it work?

[mr_mischief]

The news.com story says the hard drive doesn't store the key at all. It's figured during the POST process within the hard drive's BIOS config and isn't known to the drive itself when the power is down.

What it sounds like is that if you keep the computer from booting, like a pre-boot password, the drive is utterly useless to a thief. If they can get it to boot instead of staring blankly at the password prompt, the thing will recalculate the key and go merrily on its way.

Hopefully it figures the key on stored CMOS config values so that if you reset the CMOS to get rid of the boot password it'll still not generate the right key.

Re:Crypto requires good integration

[DamnStupidElf]

Firstly, AES-256 smacks of a marketing gimmick. AES-128 is perfectly sufficient for anything that anyone wishes to protect; nobody has ever discovered a weakness in AES-128 that would be cause for concern.

Two possibilities: We've seen dramatic weaknesses in md5 and sha1, and it's not impossible that something similar could be found for AES. A reduction from 128 bit security to ~96 or even ~64 bits of security would be a relative disaster; 64-bit ciphers are simply not secure anymore.

Additionally, quantum computers can theoretically break symmetric ciphers in sqrt(n) time, which means that AES-128 could be broken this century. Assuming both a mild algorithmic reduction and quantum computing, AES-256 looks secure until the next century, if not longer.

Also, AES-256 really only takes 40% longer than AES-128 for practical purposes, since AES-128 has 10 rounds and AES-256 has 14 rounds.
Finally, AES-192 and AES-256 are authorized for TOP SECRET classification, while AES-128 is not. That's a pretty big market Fujitsu would be cutting out by only offering AES-128.

Re:Crypto requires good integration

[Detritus]

Firstly, AES-256 smacks of a marketing gimmick. AES-128 is perfectly sufficient for anything that anyone wishes to protect; nobody has ever discovered a weakness in AES-128 that would be cause for concern. Using AES-256 bloats the key size while providing absolutely no additional protection above and beyond what we already get from AES-128. Whenever I hear of a crypto product advertising AES-256, I am suspicious that the company is more concerned with marketing than it is with actually providing good level-headed security.

The NSA disagrees with you. They require AES-256 for the protection of TS (Top Secret) data. AES-128 is only authorized for the protection of data classified as Secret and below.