Researchers discover a way to bypass the full hardware-based SSD encryption

Researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands have announced a flaw affecting some SSDs with hardware security; This flaw could allow an attacker to completely bypass the disk encryption. Bypassing encryption would give hackers full access to local data without having to know the password of the disk. Researchers have made it clear that the flaw only affects certain models of SSDs that have hardware encryption.

SSDs with hardware encryption contain specific chips that handle the task of encrypting and decrypting data. The vulnerabilities discovered by researchers Carlo Meijer and Bernard van Gastel are in the firmware of SSD disks. The duo says the vulnerabilities they've discovered affect "ATA Security" and "TCG Opal", two specifications for implementing encryption on SSDs using hardware encryption. During the investigation, the researchers discovered that the SSDs they had scanned allowed the user to set a password to decrypt the data, but they also had a master password. defined by the SSD provider. Like most router administrator passwords, these passwords are located in the user manual of the SSD, which allows anyone to read it to access the data.

Some readers reviewed by the researchers had incorrect implementations of ATA security and TCG Opal specifications. These flawed implementations meant that the password chosen by the user and the disk encryption key were not crypto-related. The researchers wrote: "Absence of this [cryptographically linking] the property is catastrophic. Indeed, the protection of user data no longer depends on secrets. All information needed to retrieve user data is stored on the drive and can be retrieved. "

The duo recognizes having tested a limited number of SSDs for the moment, but that the detected faults have worked on each of the disks. Among the readers tested in the research project are the Crucial MX100, Crucial MX200, Crucial MX300, Samsung 840 Evo, Samsung 850 Evo, Samsung T3 and Samsung T5 models.

Unfortunately for Windows users, they are more vulnerable than other operating system users because Windows BitLocker uses hardware encryption of the SSD by leaving unencrypted data at the software level. The researchers suggested that the TCG working group publishes a reference implementation of Opal to help developers and prevent this type of problem in the future.