Seagate announces hardware FDE for laptop and desktop machines

[Jacob Appelbaum]

Seagate recently announced a 1TB drive for desktop systems and a 250GB
laptop drive. What's of interest is that it appears to use a system
called DriveTrust for Full Disk Encryption. It's apparently AES-128.

The detail lacking press release is here:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=seagate-unveils-new-giants&vgnextoid=6bb0e0e1f0494110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

The relevant excerpt of it appears to be:
"The Barracuda FDE (full disc encryption) hard drive is the world’s
first 3.5-inch desktop PC drive with native encryption to prevent
unauthorized access to data on lost or stolen hard drives or systems.
Using AES encryption, a government-grade security protocol and the
strongest that is commercially available, The Barracuda FDE hard drive
delivers endpoint security for powered-down systems. Logging back on
requires a pre-boot user password that can be buttressed with other
layers of authentication such as smart cards and biometrics."


I found this somewhat relevant paper (though it seriously lacks
important details) on DriveTrust:
http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/whitepaper/TP564_DriveTrust_Oct06.pdf

Has anyone read relevant details for this system? It seems like
something quite useful but I'm not sure that I trust something I can't
review...

-jacob

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