| Title | Self-Encrypting Deception: Weaknesses in the Encryption of Solid State Drives |
| Publication Type | Conference Paper |
| Year of Publication | 2019 |
| Authors | Meijer, Carlo, van Gastel, Bernard |
| Conference Name | 2019 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP) |
| Date Published | may |
| Keywords | bitlocker, critical security weaknesses, cryptography, data protection, Encryption, encryption software, external models, firmware, flash memories, Hardware, hardware full-disk encryption, hardware-encryption, Human Behavior, internal models, Metrics, Microsoft Windows, password, peripheral interfaces, policy-based governance, pubcrawl, resilience, Resiliency, reverse engineering, security guarantees, security weaknesses, Software, solid state drives, SSD, Standards, vulnerabilities |
| Abstract | We have analyzed the hardware full-disk encryption of several solid state drives (SSDs) by reverse engineering their firmware. These drives were produced by three manufacturers between 2014 and 2018, and are both internal models using the SATA and NVMe interfaces (in a M.2 or 2.5" traditional form factor) and external models using the USB interface. In theory, the security guarantees offered by hardware encryption are similar to or better than software implementations. In reality, we found that many models using hardware encryption have critical security weaknesses due to specification, design, and implementation issues. For many models, these security weaknesses allow for complete recovery of the data without knowledge of any secret (such as the password). BitLocker, the encryption software built into Microsoft Windows will rely exclusively on hardware full-disk encryption if the SSD advertises support for it. Thus, for these drives, data protected by BitLocker is also compromised. We conclude that, given the state of affairs affecting roughly 60% of the market, currently one should not rely solely on hardware encryption offered by SSDs and users should take additional measures to protect their data. |
| DOI | 10.1109/SP.2019.00088 |
| Citation Key | meijer_self-encrypting_2019 |
Self-Encrypting Deception: Weaknesses in the Encryption of Solid State Drives