Self-Encrypting Deception: Weaknesses in the Encryption of Solid State Drives

Abstract

We have analyzed the hardware full-disk encryption of several solid state drives (SSDs) by reverse engineering their firmware. These drives were produced by three manufacturers between 2014 and 2018, and are both internal models using the SATA and NVMe interfaces (in a M.2 or 2.5" traditional form factor) and external models using the USB interface.In theory, the security guarantees offered by hardware encryption are similar to or better than software implementations. In reality, we found that many models using hardware encryption have critical security weaknesses due to specification, design, and implementation issues. For many models, these security weaknesses allow for complete recovery of the data without knowledge of any secret (such as the password).BitLocker, the encryption software built into Microsoft Windows will rely exclusively on hardware full-disk encryption if the SSD advertises support for it. Thus, for these drives, data protected by BitLocker is also compromised.We conclude that, given the state of affairs affecting roughly 60% of the market, currently one should not rely solely on hardware encryption offered by SSDs and users should take additional measures to protect their data.

Classifying Proprietary Firmware on a Solid State Drive Using Idle State Current Draw Measurements

“…Another natural follow-on would be an investigation of modified firmware. This could include manufacturer provided firmware versions that have been altered using the findings of [4] or malware versions found in the ''wild. ''…”

“…Representative of the former, Bogaard and Bruijn demonstrated the feasibility of inserting a functioning backdoor into open-source SSD firmware [11] but recognized that this would be significantly more difficult on proprietary firmware where access was restricted by the manufacturer. This latter challenge has recently been overcome by Meijer and Gastel who demonstrated the ability to compromise proprietary, closed-source firmware on both Crucial and Samsung SSDs using techniques that included physical access and code injection [4]. In other related work, the firmware of SSDs has also been modified to detect and recover from ransomware attacks [12].…”

“…In 2013, KingFast inadvertently shipped a counterfeit SSD with fake NAND memory to a reviewer [3]. More recently in 2019, researchers found flaws in Crucial and Samsung SSDs that allow the encryption to be bypassed [4] and Intel was forced to release a patch to correct a privilege escalation vulnerability in some of its enterprise SSDs [5].…”

TEE-aided Write Protection Against Privileged Data Tampering

“…We assume all hardware (e.g., the CPU/chipset and the storage device), microcode/firmware and other architecture-shipped modules (e.g., TXT's SINIT, see Section II) are properly implemented by the manufactures, and the user is motivated to choose a system with no known flaws. An example of such a flaw is a series of recently identified implementation bugs [43] in SED firmware implementations that highly affect data secrecy (refer to Section VI for details). 6) Attacks requiring physical access are excluded (e.g., no evil-maid attacks).…”

Evaluating Encryption Algorithms for Sensitive Data Using Different Storage Devices

“…Furthermore, in 2019, researchers Meijer and van Gastel [15] analysed hardware full-disk encryption of several solidstate drives (SSDs) produced by three manufacturers between 2014 and 2018 using internal SATA and NVMe interfaces or external USB interface. e analysis was done by RE (reverse engineering) the firmware of those devices.…”