You originally asked what the point is of a self encrypting device. Even assuming this particular device in question has the attack vector you pointed out (I don’t know, I haven’t checked), it isn’t pointless.
Your attack vector assumes the key is in memory. That would be a very odd and weird design that I’ve never seen… The auth key is usually stored on cryptographically secure hardware (a tpm), you unlock it at boot and it talks to the drive, the OS doesn’t know about it or see it.
There’s technically an attack vector there, an unproven one that assumes they have a backdoor or an undisclosed flaw at the hardware level… so sure, if you really really don’t want to risk it, encrypt your data yourself.
There are a lot of reasons to choose these devices:
Performance
Nothing to configure os side, you just write to it and it’s encrypted. Power loss means it cannot be decrypted by a malicious actor.
Disposal. You can often issue a single command that scrambles the auth key and now all the data is unrecoverable without you needing to write every byte.
Yeah totally fair, thanks for the corrections. I’m not really all that exposed to this field, I was feeling a little frank about the details but I was trying to make a larger point.
TPM can make it infeasible to extract the key, but there’s also the attack surface of bugging the bug. Once access is authorized to encrypted storage, protection depends on what happens outside TPM. That’s one. There’s also the potential to sniff the password, which would be two. They have full access to the device and room, with capacity to wait for the culprit to return for fetching data.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I also think drive encryption with TPM would require that the drive be decrypted while in use. This device wouldn’t be of any value if it weren’t in use, so there’s also that.
It seems like something you can probably count on being secure for something like a home security system. If running an espionage campaign against a trillion dollar company with Uncle Sam in the back pocket, I’d confidently bet against this system.
Not trying to make grandiose claims about the security of TPM. I just think this scenario was a particularly risky adventure — one which could have feasibility been easier to perform with less risk, had the device come with no capability to decrypt its own data.
I’m imagining something that perhaps micro-batches audio through a raw_audio - encrypt -> storage process, but say every 15 seconds or so. Then transport the encrypted data to a device with decryption keys.
You originally asked what the point is of a self encrypting device. Even assuming this particular device in question has the attack vector you pointed out (I don’t know, I haven’t checked), it isn’t pointless.
Your attack vector assumes the key is in memory. That would be a very odd and weird design that I’ve never seen… The auth key is usually stored on cryptographically secure hardware (a tpm), you unlock it at boot and it talks to the drive, the OS doesn’t know about it or see it.
There’s technically an attack vector there, an unproven one that assumes they have a backdoor or an undisclosed flaw at the hardware level… so sure, if you really really don’t want to risk it, encrypt your data yourself.
There are a lot of reasons to choose these devices:
Yeah totally fair, thanks for the corrections. I’m not really all that exposed to this field, I was feeling a little frank about the details but I was trying to make a larger point.
TPM can make it infeasible to extract the key, but there’s also the attack surface of bugging the bug. Once access is authorized to encrypted storage, protection depends on what happens outside TPM. That’s one. There’s also the potential to sniff the password, which would be two. They have full access to the device and room, with capacity to wait for the culprit to return for fetching data.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I also think drive encryption with TPM would require that the drive be decrypted while in use. This device wouldn’t be of any value if it weren’t in use, so there’s also that.
It seems like something you can probably count on being secure for something like a home security system. If running an espionage campaign against a trillion dollar company with Uncle Sam in the back pocket, I’d confidently bet against this system.
Not trying to make grandiose claims about the security of TPM. I just think this scenario was a particularly risky adventure — one which could have feasibility been easier to perform with less risk, had the device come with no capability to decrypt its own data.
I’m imagining something that perhaps micro-batches audio through a
raw_audio - encrypt -> storageprocess, but say every 15 seconds or so. Then transport the encrypted data to a device with decryption keys.