Copy protection of ordinary disk drives?

[Brian Lane]

>    http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/15620.html
> 
>    Stealth plan puts copy protection into every hard drive
> 

[snip]

> <B>How it works</B>

> 
> But because the system makes use of the physical location on the device of
> the encrypted item, software designed for non-compliant drives will break
> in some circumstance when encrypted data files are moved.
> 
> "It requires both drives to be compliant when data is to move from one disk
> to another," says Lotspiech. "And a compliant application to get all that
> data to the new drive".
> 
> So a hard drive containing small individual containing non-copyable files
> of say, Gartner reports, will essentially be unrestorable using existing
> backup programs.

  Maybe I'm being dense today, but I don't see how this is going to work. So
they have a key on your drive, they encrypt the data using this key, but at
some point the data has to be decrypted and used, which means that it can be
intercepted.

  The article isn't too clear, but it appears that a 'compliant application'
is going to be needed to do the encrypt/decrypt? All software is subject to
disassembly, so there is no real protection there.

  Not that it isn't a really dumb idea, they're trying to remove your
control of the bits stored on your harddrive -- a Really Bad Thing
obviously.

  Brian

-- 
Brian C. Lane - Linux Programmer/Consultant/Writer         www.brianlane.com
Virtual Web Hosting                                   www.nexuscomputing.com
NRA Life Member                                          www.libertynews.org
============================================================================
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made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There
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	-- Daniel Webster

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