RSSNSA authorizes Seagate self-encrypting HDD for government use
By Tim Conneally | Published May 13, 2008, 5:45 PM
Seagate's Momentus 5400 FDE.2 HDD has been approved for one of the most demanding security standards in the US government, the National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems Security Policy (NSTISSP) #11.
This marks the second time a federal agency has honored Seagate's product with security accreditation. Last Year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) gave certification to Seagate's Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption algorithm. This transparent hardware-based encryption powers the Momentus hard drive.
Momentus 5400 FDE.2 2.5", 1.5 Gbps SATA drive is offered to consumers in 80, 120, and 160 GB sizes, and can now be deployed in US Government agencies and contractors working in issues of National Security thanks to the NSA clearance and helped by the NIST certification.
In the last three years, the FBI has reported the loss of 160 laptops, with as many as 51 containing classified or sensitive information, The State Department misplaced $30 million worth of laptops containing anti-terror information, and the Commerce department lost 1,137 laptops. The government loses sensitive information on such a grand scale that one begins to wonder if Seagate's encryption would be a band aid applied to a severed artery.
Sure, the drives require pre-boot authentication, maintain hashed passwords, offer on-the-fly erasure, and emergency password recovery files are kept on a separate drive. But if all the thousands of already missing laptops used self-encryption such as that employed by Momentus HDD, the government might have to adjust the way it accounts for data loss, since its loss may no longer necessarily be someone else's gain.
A step in the right direction iff (if and only if) it is used correctly by the end users.
Specifically:
1. Encryption will not protect from a guessable or carelessly handled encryption key.
2. Encryption will not protect from a hardware keylogger that intercepts that key long before the computer has booted.
3. Encryption will not protect from someone (or an overhead camera) getting a glimpse of the key being entered.
4. All electrical circuits carrying alternating current radiate; just exactly how "uninterceptable" is the radiation of every possible keyboard and computer configuration that this hard drive will be used with? (Seagate cannot possibly answer that).
And then there is the whole different story of who has the "emergency password recovery files" stated in the article and how well are they protected?
And if that were not enough, there are the usual additional concerns:
1. Does the vendor (Seagate or whoever) have an additional decryption key (ADK) for "lawful interception? If so, just exactly how well is it protected? If Seagate says they have no ADK, who vouches for that that we can trust?
2. Who (that we can trust) vouches for the accuracy of the implementation of the AES in the Seagate chip? Just because "it works" means absolutely nothing.
Sorry, but while NSA may have blessed this for unclassified documents (which is a good thing because something is better than nothing), I wouldn't put too much faith in Seagate's device for anything truly sensitive none the less.
Oh, and another thing. Once the authorized user has authenticated himself/herself to the hard drive, all protection afforded by the encryption disappears while the computer is "on". If the authorized user goes to the restroom and leaves the machine "on", or even leaves the live machine connected to a network that it can be hacked through, the encryption of the hard disk buys nothing since it will be transparent to the user (authorized or not).
Michael
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