When analyzing the external SSD Verbatim Store 'n' Go Secure Portable HDD, Matthias Deeg found out that the firmware of the USB-to-SATA bridge controller INIC-3637EN uses AES-256 with the ECB (Electronic Codebook) mode. This operation mode of block ciphers like AES encrypts identical plaintext data, in this case blocks of 16 bytes, always to identical ciphertext data. For some data, for instance bitmap images, the lack of the cryptographic property called diffusion concerning the ECB mode can leak sensitive information even in encrypted data. Continue reading...
