Posted 10/07/09 at 08:15:28 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Super Talent and Toshiba today announced a new range of co-branded SSDs called the UltraDrive DX. The official press release was largely dedicated to UltraDrive DX’s twin-layer encryption. It features password encryption as its first line of defense and hardware data randomization technology as the second.

Data randomization occurs with every write to the drive but still fails to prevent the drive from marching at sequential read speeds of up to 230 MB/sec and sequential write speeds of up to 180 MB/sec.

“As the first Toshiba co-branded SSD on the market, UltraDrive DX features a Toshiba controller and Toshiba’s MLC NAND flash memories. The DX provides superb security and reliability features combined with cutting edge performance in both read and write speeds,” said Joe James, director of marketing at Super Talent. 

Hit the jump for pricing details.

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Posted 08/28/09 at 09:49:50 AM by Paul Lilly

In exactly the same time it takes to cook a batch of minute-rice, computer scientists in Japan claim to have developed a way to crack WPA encryption just as fast.

Security researchers first showed how WPA could be broken last November. The earlier attack worked on a smaller range of WPA devices and took about 12 to 15 minutes to work its mojo. But the Japanese researchers have taken the attack to a new level, according to Dragos Ruiu, organizer of the PacSec security conference where the first WPA hack was demonstrated.

"They took this stuff which was fairly theoretical and they've made it much more practical," Ruiu said.

Both attacks are limited to WPA system using the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TIKP) algorithm, which means if you use a newer WAP2 device or a WPA system based on the Advanced Encryption Standerd (AES) algorithm, you're in the clear. At least for now.

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Posted 04/16/09 at 09:53:37 AM by Paul Lilly

In what sounds like a simple formula for success, Dell plans to combine one good thing with another good thing for what it hopes will turn out to be a great thing. Or to be less vague, Dell, who offers both SSDs and encrypted drives, will start adding encrypted SSDs to its notebook lineup sometime this summer.

Samsung will manufacture the drives, which will come in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities to start. The self-encrypting drives will automatically encrypt data as it is being saved, "an industry first" for SSDs, according to Samsung and Wave Systems.

"Benefits of hardware encryption over today's software-only encryption approaches include faster performance, better security, and an 'always on' feature," Samsung and Wave Systems said in a statement. "Because encryption keys and access credentials are generated and stored within the drive hardware, they never leave its confines and are never held in the operating system or software."

No word yet on exactly when Dell will implement the new SSDs or at what price points.

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Posted 02/02/09 at 12:30:00 PM by Justin Kerr

Hard drive encryption sounds like an intimating concept, mostly because it is. The thought of taking your precious files, then using a mathematical formula to convert them into random noise before scattering them back across your disk is a hard sell. The harsh reality is, mobile computing is on the rise, and so is laptop theft. Depending on who you ask, anywhere from 500,000 to over 1,000,000 laptops are lost or stolen in the US each year. In some cases, the data on the hard drive is often more valuable than the machine itself.

To determine if disk encryption is something you should be considering, simply ask yourself if your PC contains anything you wouldn’t want posted publically on the internet. If the answer to this is yes (and I assume for most of us it is) then encryption is worth considering.

The good news is, you no longer need to be a member of the CIA to lock down your machine with government level encryption.  In fact, one of the most highly regarded and powerful encryption tools available is both free, and open source (our favorite combination!) True Crypt allows you to protect either all your data, or only what you choose. You can mask your boot drive and sensitive documents, while leaving your games or other non generic data in the clear. While no encryption process is without risk, True Crypt is designed to put your mind at ease, and takes no chances with your data. The process can be reversed at any time even without being able to boot into windows.

So if your ready to get started click the jump to learn step by step how to protect your data.

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Posted 10/10/08 at 05:25:22 PM by Alex Castle

In what may be the biggest thing to happen to cryptography in a very long time, the world’s first computer network built with working quantum encryption technology has been demonstrated in Vienna.  The network connects six locations with a total 200 km of fiber optic cable and the encryption system is said to be completely unbreakable, according to the BBC.

The network transmits a stream of millions of individual photons a second through the cable, and can detect if anyone has attempted to listen in on the stream.

Gilles Brassard, of Montreal University explained to the BBC how the system can be unbreakable: “All quantum security schemes are based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, on the fact that you cannot measure quantum information without disturbing it.  Because of that, one can have a communications channel between two users on which it’s impossible to eavesdrop without creating a disturbance.  An eavesdropper would create a mark on it.”

If an intrusion is detected, the data transfer is immediately rerouted through different nodes.

Pretty cool, huh? Let us know what you think of this new technology after the break.

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Posted 07/10/08 at 09:06:14 AM by Chris Moody

The folks behind the popular torrent site,The Pirate Bay have added another project to their list. They want to encrypt the Internet. Not just little pieces, but the whole thing. They have named it Transparent end-to-end encryption for the Internets, or IPETEE for short. The encryption would happen on the network level so most anything could be encrypted transmitted and decrypted, providing the systems have adopted the technology on both sides. It would be completely transparent to the user, unlike say IPSEC on IPv4. IPv6 may make this moot if its implementation is more polished (and we will have to leave IPv4 sometime)

Apparently the European Union’s move going to a DMCA like copyright enforcement effort is what spurred this interest from the Sweden based group.

I love anything that keeps our privacy, private. I do have to wonder if it’s going to really be practical or worth it to encrypt everything. It adds overhead to bandwidth, and increases loads on CPUs. Granted these are minimal, but on busy servers this will pile up and run up costs, which would impede adoption.

Of course it still has to be launched, and track records count. The Pirate Bay’s other unlaunched projects include: The Video Bay, music site PlayBle, and a new secure version of the P2P protocol. IPETEE is a much more ambitious and involved project than any of those. We will have to wait and see if there will be enough interest to get it going. In the mean time we can be entertained by their legal section.

What do you think of total encryption of all internet traffic? Is it worth it? Let us know in the comments section!

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Posted 03/30/08 at 03:01:57 PM by Zack Stern

Hollywood math: HDCP + AACS = PITA²

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Posted 01/10/08 at 04:17:00 PM by Erin Simon

The legal right not to turn over your encryption password.

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