Gordon Hughes Feb T13 Change Request re Security Erase Gordon Hughes, UCSD Formerly Seagate (until 1997) PI on NSA Secure Erase R&D program Original requester for SE in T13 and T10 Talk Outline: What SE Change is requested Will it change virus security? Example SE utility showing present problem Background on user benefits of change

Gordon Hughes Feb Request ATA Spec change For Security Freeze Lock command: Remove SE from abort command list, so Secure Erase can be issued by SE utilities, by Windows, and by Unix/Linux Table 10, Security mode command actions Change SECURITY ERASE PREPARE from ABORTED to EXECUTABLE, in Frozen state Change SECURITY ERASE from ABORTED to EXECUTABLE, in Frozen state Virus security will be same as block write SE

Gordon Hughes Feb Example: CMRR Freeware SE Utility HDDerase.exe, a DOS floppy boot utility Downloadable freeware utility from UCSD Runs only from floppy drive (for virus protection) 4 erase options: HDD SE, Fast Erase (with random password), & block write SE (DoD 2550 triple and new DoD) Checks if Security Feature Set is supported Tries to turn it on, if set to off by Device Configuration Checks if drive is Locked or Frozen If Locked, asks user for HDD password If Frozen, HDD SE commands Aborted (ATA spec) Can always SE by block erase (DoD 5220) CMRR working with Microsoft on Windows SE Microsoft using utility for R&D to put SE command in Windows Microsoft is aware of BIOS Freeze Lock problem

Gordon Hughes Feb Why not just block write SE? (DoD 2550) Block erase utilities (PC World May 20, 2003): Summit Computer Hard Disk Scrubber Jetico Inc.'s $40 BCWipe LSoft Technologies Inc.'s $30 KillDisk Pro Not secure per National Security Agency Doesn’t erase reassigned blocks, success not certain HDD SE is up to 3X faster, per CMRR tests Enhanced SE can qualify for NSA secret data DoD 2550 is for unclassified and confidential data only Enhanced SE needs to be implimented and validated

Gordon Hughes Feb CMRR SE Validation Tests Tested 35 ATA & SCSI drives for SE All recent ATA drives SE ok (>10-15 GB) All 4 system board ports, all command combos, Power interrupt leaves drive locked SE doesn’t work if BIOS issues Freeze Lock All SCSI drives don’t SE (optional in T10) Means SATA drives all do SE?

Gordon Hughes Feb Background for Spec change request 2002, Gartner Dataquest: 150,000 hard drives "retired" 2003 Garfinkel and Shelat, in newspapers worldwide and in IEEE Journal of Security & Privacy They bought 158 used hard drives at computer stores and on eBay. 49 contained "significant personal information" Medical correspondence, love letters, pornography,5,000 credit cards. One had a account numbers from a cash machine in Illinois. 2002: Pennsylvania sold computers with state employee information 1997: Arizona pharmacy computer sold with 2,000 customer’s prescriptions. CMRR buys eBay drives for SE tests 1/3 have unerased user data.

Gordon Hughes Feb References “Secure Erase of Disk Drive Data” IDEMA Insight Magazine, Spring 2002 Storage Visions Conference Las Vegas, talk on SE and intelligent storage, January 2003 Letter to Computer World magazine, May 2003 PC World letter, “Secure Erase Project,” October 2003 “Secure Erase” CMRR Newsletter, Summer 2003 DISKCON San Jose talk, Sept 2003