Weak self-scrambling SSDs opens up Windows BitLocker

Users whose believe the data on their drives are protected with Microsoft's Windows Bitlocker could be in for lengthy workarounds, after researchers showed that the default hardware-based encryption on solid state storage isn't secure.

Carlo Meijer and Bernard van Gastel of Radboud University, Netherlands, detailed in their paper [pdf] how techniques known to be used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) can get around encryption that looks strong and impenetrable on paper.

This is a problem for Bitlocker which defaults to hardware encryption on SSDs as per the Trusting Computing Group Opal Self Encrypting Drive (SED) specification. Bitlocker can be coaxed into using software encryption with the Windows Group Policy tool, if users have admin rights on the computers in question.