I wouldn't use them. Is there any chance at all that those don't have an NSA backdoor? I think most hardware encryption just XOR's on the phrase "We're the government. It's for your own good."

If I’m encrypting my disk, the NSA is far at the bottom of people I want to be safe from. At least the NSA might make a reasonably well implemented backdoor.

My sympathies to you if you feel the NSA is the biggest threat you're facing. I just don't want somone who steals my laptop to be able to empty my bank account. That's why I always turn whole disk encryption on.

The same chance as Windows encryption having a backdoor of course.

Windows encryption could at least theoretically be audited via decompilation, whatever firmware happens to be installed on your random hard drive? Not a chance.

I think if a state entity is dead set on acquiring your data, they will do that once they have access to the chips.

This notion that your encryption- any encryption- is going to stop a state-funded actor from getting past to your data is just as ridiculous IMO as the people who stockpile AR-15's and cosplay soldiers on the weekends think they're a realistic threat to the same military that has predator drones.

If the government wants your data, they probably already have it, just like if they wanted you dead, you'd already be in the ground. Assuming there's enough left of you to bury anyway.

"State actor defeatist"-style arguments against taking any technical precautions often conflate two things that the government does: 1. Large scale mostly passive dragnet surveillance, 2. Individually targeted surveillance.

Reasonable people can admit that they can't do much about case 2, while still believing that applying countermeasures against 1 can be effective. Also note there is more than one government in the world that may intend to exploit your lack of privacy...

Just because you're given up on privacy and sovereignty doesn't mean you should go around infecting others with the same contagion.

True, but worrying that your hard disk encryption is vulnerable to the NSA is something that only makes sense if you're dealing with case 2, not case 1.

And yet, Afghanistan sent the US military packing.

> whatever firmware happens to be installed on your random hard drive? Not a chance.

Well, there's certainly a chance. Firmware is reverse-engineered all the time.

> The same chance as Windows encryption having a backdoor of course.

The NSA has loaded their firmware after the fact without the drives' OEMs cooperation:

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/nsa-hid-spying-software-in-h...

Well if I were trying to defend myself against the NSA I would be doing different things entirely… alas there is no threat model I’m concerned with that includes the NSA. For starters hard drive encryption would be the least of my worries.

Exactly this. If your threat profile includes the possibility of special governmental attention, then you're playing a much more serious game and need to be off the grid entirely.

The only way to keep your data safe if the NSA decides they want to have a look, is to not use modern technology.

Even if you have the type of resources that a big tech corporation like Google has, sooner or later the NSA will get a copy of your data.

Is there any chance that Microsoft's disk encryption doesn't have an NSA backdoor?

Chances are that Microsoft disk encryption implementation is so bad, that an explicit NSA backdoor is not necessary.

If it does, there's zero chance that Microsoft know about it. When your company is worth $2,427,000,000,000 , you'd have to be insane to risk it all like that.

Trillion dollar US corporations are still under US law, which does include security requests and gag orders from secret services.

so you're saying there's a chance?

The primary value of bitlocker is to defend against theft, not the NSA.

And if you use Windows the way Microsoft wants you to, all your data is already on OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint (which actually is the backend for the former too). Which the NSA can simply demand access to.

On-drive encryption serves to allow for secure erase which would otherwise require an entire write cycle and cannot be done at an OS level anyway due to wear leveling and reserved space.

It is not intended for providing privacy or security.

Secure erase works on assumption that encrypted data is indistinguishable from random noise AND that attacker cannot recover the encryption key. Insecure implementations of encryption will leave some way to recover/reverse engineer the key, which means they are useless for secure erase as well.

Is secure erase reliable? If so, how can you say the intent of the encryption isn't security?

Secure erase via sledgehammer is pretty reliable.

It depends on your threat model. Just enabling BitLocker will defeat someone from plugging in a Linux live USB and resetting your Windows password. For corporate security ATA Secure Erase done by a vendor who accepts liability and gives them a "certificate of data destruction" may be enough to meet HIPAA, FERPA, SOX compliance requirements. Or they consider drives cheap enough that physically shredding them to ensure no mistakes is the better choice. At the national security level you pulverize the drives after zeroing them.

As one who's actually had the pleasure of getting to use one of the classified drive destroyers, there aren't armed guards. Not sure if there's a requirement that it be done in a room with no windows, though.

My point was that Kenny's claim is that on-drive encryption allows for easier "erasure", presumably by deleting the keys needed to decrypt the data and leaving the drive in the same state.

If that process is good enough to ensure proper "erasure" of the data (effectively complete prevention of data access), then how is it not equally secure as an encryption schema?

I looked into it after buying an expensive SSD that supported the Opal encryption standard.

Apparently several vendors were using fixed encryption keys and at least one vendor was using all zeros as the AES key!

> IIRC thought the whole reason for this was because the Hardware-based encryption turned out to be so terrible on just about every drive that Microsoft just decided to not even bother using it.

From 2018:

> The two [researchers] say that the SEDs they've analyzed, allowed users to set a password that decrypted their data, but also came with support for a so-called "master password" that was set by the SED vendor.

> Any attacker who read an SED's manual can use this master password to gain access to the user's encrypted password, effectively bypassing the user's custom password.

> The only way users would be safe was if they either changed the master password or if they 'd configure the SED's Master Password Capability setting to "Maximum," which effectively disables it.

* https://www.zdnet.com/article/flaws-in-self-encrypting-ssds-...