The firmware update process on the tested hard drives does not use cryptographic signature verification and can therefore be hijacked. On an Initio INIC-1607E chip the complexity is 2^57, making DEK recovery harder, but within the reach of attackers with access to suitable hardware resources, the researchers said. This compromises the encryption without the need to recover any password or KEK.įor the two remaining chips that did not have authentication backdoors, the researchers determined that the data encryption key (DEK) was generated using poor sources of random data obtained from the host computer and a predictable on-chip random number generator.įor one bridge, the JMicron JMS538S, the researchers estimate the complexity to be at best 2^40, which, according to them, allows the DEK to be recovered in a few hours on a normal high-end computer.

For one JMicron chip, the researchers managed to use a commercial data recovery tool to delete some bits from a drive’s service area, completely unlocking the drive’s data.

Encrypting external drive