International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Self encrypting devices (SEDs) doing full disk encryption are getting more and more widespread. Hardware implemented AES encryption provides fast and transparent encryption of all user data on the storage medium, at all times. In this paper we will look into some models in a self encrypting external hard drive series; the Western Digital My Passport series. We will describe the security model

of these devices and show several security weaknesses like RAM leakage, weak key attacks and even backdoors on some of these devices, resulting in decrypted user data, without the knowledge of any user credentials.