Abit's SecureIDE

[Mads Rasmussen]

There seems to be a new interesting product from Abit, a motherboard
manufacturer. 

"SecureIDE", supposed to encrypt information between the CPU and the IDE
HD.

Have a look at
http://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webjsp/english/SecureIDE.htm

The idea is simple:

CPU <--> Chip <--> HD

And the concept seems to be reasonable at first eyesight, skipping the
stuff like the quote below, which gives me a snakeoil feeling.

 "A password can be cracked by software in a few hours. ABIT's SecureIDE
will keep government supercomputers busy for weeks and will keep the
RIAA away from your Kazaa files forever." 

There is a datasheet that tells it all

ftp://ftp.abit.com.tw/pub/download/fae/secureide_eng_v100.pdf

I quote:

"40-bit DES (US Data Encryption Standard) is adequate for general users"

How can they make something, seemingly good and then blow it by using
only 40-bit DES keys? It cannot be export controls can it?

Well they did only say weeks in the first quote above :o)

Mads Rasmussen
www.opencs.com.br


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