Seagate announces hardware FDE for laptop and desktop machines

[Steven M. Bellovin]

On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:50:27 +0200
Simon Josefsson <simon at josefsson.org> wrote:

> 
> It sounds to me as if they are storing the AES key used for bulk
> encryption somewhere on the disk, and that it can be unlocked via the
> password.

I'd say "decrypted by the password", rather than unlocked, but that's
the right way to do it: since it permits easy password changes.  It
also lets you do things like use different AES keys for different parts
of the disk (necessary with 3DES, probably not with AES).

> So it may be that the bulk data encryption AES key is
> randomized by the device (using what entropy?) or possibly generated
> in the factory, rather than derived from the password.
> 
There was this paper on using air turbulence-induced disk timing
variations for entropy...

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

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