On Feb 19, 2015, at 11:12 AM, Henry Baker <hbak...@pipeline.com> wrote:
> I would love to be able to program this device myself, instead of relying on
> Samsung's firmware.
Good luck with that. SSD performance and even proper operation is still
somewhat of a black art; much of the value of the device comes from the
proprietary algorithms that control it, which are build knowing details of the
design. Samsung, like other SSD makers, has every reason to keep that stuff
secret. The market advantage of increments in speed and other features is
significant; the market to people who want to program it themselves is
essentially non-existent.
> BTW, what's the point of AES encryption on this pre-p0wned device? More
> security theatre?
It depends on the implementation and what kind of attacker you're considering.
There have been implementations in the past which use simply match a password
stored in the device - encrypted with AES so that the advertising claims aren't
outright lies - against a password entered at boot; the data itself was left
unencrypted. But there's plenty of power in a device like this to essentially
build FDE right into the SSD. That's probably proof against any attack against
a stolen/seized SSD. (Of course, Samsung may have deliberately, or through
incompetence, provided a back door - we'd never know. But most attackers
wouldn't know either. I'm sure North Korea would *assume* that the South
Korean intelligence services have access, whether it's true or not.)
Low-enough level attacks against the boot sequence could intercept and leak the
password. The OS typically would come in way too late to see the password -
but of course if you take it over, you have full access to the device.
In summary: Assuming a decent implementation and no back doors available to
the attackers of interest to you, this has exactly the strengths and weaknesses
of FDE, with no overhead in the host. Not really security theatre, but given
modern hardware, perhaps not much of an advantage either. You could go for
defense in depth by using FDE on top of what the device provides.
-- Jerry
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