Hardware hard disk encryption for P2P users

[leilp]

I have found a way to protect myself a little bit :-) Tell me please if this is secure enough and worth buying ? http://www.elkom.com.tw/files/HDDKEY_beta2.pdf

Leon.

[multi]

it looks very interesting
not sure why you would want to go to that much trouble tbh

[leilp]

Originally Posted by multi

it looks very interesting
not sure why you would want to go to that much trouble tbh

OK, I got order confirmation a short while ago and I will wire money for two x 128. Let's test it :-) I will describe when they come :-)

[multi]

welcome to the forum leilp
if you think its worth a try , why not ?
let us know how it goes


my opinion of these sorts of devices is they ar e probably easily broken with old fashioned tech..
say for example the feds raid you and want to know whats on your computer
they would just get your key off you
by using thumbscrews on you
so you tell them where it is

but seriously..
if you want protect your data from prying eyes when you are not at your computer
it would be fantastic
otherwise i dont see much use for it..

[Mazer]

They should make a portable HDD enclosure with their cipher card built in. That would make more sense, to me anyway.

[albed]

Looks to me like you could fit that little gizmo into an enclosure without too much trouble. The one I have has plenty of room.

[JackSpratts]

Originally Posted by multi

they would just get your key off you
by using thumbscrews on you
so you tell them where it is

(i love the smiley in that post.)

- js.

[Drakonix]

Just some thoughts on this....

Elkom introduces 128 bit and 192 bit hard drive encryption devices for ordinary citizens and corporations. HDDKEY is a device specially designed to encrypt and decrypt data with the 3DES (Triple DES) encryption engine. HDDKEY is an operating system independent and does not require any software drivers. It works on the hardware layer without software intervention of any kind. The secret random number transferred from the key token never reaches RAM or HDD surface where your sensitive data are stored in the encrypted form. The secret key is erased from the HDDKEY’s internal registers upon reset, reboot or shut down and can never be recovered.

It’s an interesting device. It’s greatest advantage is that it’s not software based, and won’t slow things down. The 192 bit version is $75.00, so it’s not too expensive.

There has to be some smarts in the device so that it does not encrypt commands going to the hard drive, and only deals with data being written to, or read from the drive. It’s application is stated to be hard drive specific, it may not work properly if used on a CD or DVD recorder drive.

There are some limitations on the protection it can give if someone has physical access to your computer, the HDDKEY device and the encrypted drive. For the greatest security, the device and secret key must be separately secured.

The “secret random number” key is generated using a utility program “3des_v2.6.exe” which can be downloaded from the site at http://www.elkom.com.tw/files/3des_v2.6.zip . The utility uses random mouse movements to generate a random hexadecimal key. I used it to generate a “secret key” for 192 bits. A picture below shows the result. The utility then writes the key, unencrypted, to a .bin file on your hard disk. A hex dump of the file written by the utility is also pictured. It’s just the 24 bytes of the key I generated. The program screen says that the key contains parity bits, so any sequence of 24 hexadecimal bytes may not work as a key.

Apparently, this key is then written to the HDDKEY device. The article says the key is erased from the HDDKEY “upon reset, reboot or shut down” , which means the next time you use it the key would have to be re-sent to the HDDKEY device.

Since the key is written to an unencrypted file, the key could be recovered from the file. The entry of the key could also be captured using a key logger. I would be inclined to do something like write these keys only on a smartmedia card (they are very thin) and conceal it. Since the key apparently has to be in computer-readable format to be sent to the HDDKEY device, merely memorizing the key may not be possible.

I would say the HDDKEY device definitely has useful possibilities in the exchange of large amounts of data via hard drives.

[Mazer]

After that utility generates the key it gets stored in a specialized USB flash drive connected directly to the HDDKEY, not through one of the system USB posts on the motherboard. Digidesign uses a similar setup to control access to their popular ProTools audio editing software. They key can't be typed in with the keyboard or loaded from a disk, only throught this flash drive. And if the HDDKEY is connected to the system disk then the computer won't even boot until the flash drive is physically connected.