[CentOS] Dell 120 GB 5400 RPM Encrypted Serial ATA Hard Drive

Thu Mar 26 22:47:44 UTC 2009
Ionut Vancea <ionut.vancea at gmail.com>

Hi,

2009/3/26 Rob Kampen <rkampen at kampensonline.com>:
>
> Excuse a really dumb question, how does this provide me with security?
> I assume it still uses the normal SATA interface and thus the OS writes to
> the drive as normal, but now it is encrypted onto the physical media..... so
> now I steal the laptop, or just the physical drive, plug it into my SATA
> controller and voila read all the encrypted data off the drive???
> I am obviously missing something - there must be a key somewhere off the
> drive for this to work as a securely encrypted system.
> Flumoxed!

At the end of that article:
http://headworx.slupik.com/2008/02/fde-full-disk-encryption-hard-drive.html
there are three useful links which maybe will clarify how FDE works.

from the last link:

"In short, it is a security solution that fully encrypts your entire
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), including the Operating System etc. It is one
of the "most transparent" encryption products you can get for your
computer. Once installed you just have to authenticate once before the
boot time, and if successful the HDD is unlocked and behaves like any
other HDD. You don't have to worry about what files to encrypt and
what not to encrypt. With FDE everything is encrypted. It is for the
same reason that the US Government is currently conducting a
competition of various FDE solutions to select and implement the best
one."

Cheers,

-- 
===
Ioan Vancea
http://www.vioan.ro