IEEE 1667 versus TCG’s Opal
Posted by Ken Y-N on April 2nd, 2010 at 03:00pm
Browsing through Wikipedia, I came across some rather bizarre text on Hardware-based full disk encryption. A paragraph reads:
Currently there is an effort by Microsoft, that has a software FDE product called Bitlocker to block TCG commands through their Windows Operating System. This effort is in the IEEE 1667 group that was founded by Microsoft and some flash drive vendors and was originally represented to only concern USB, but has now been extended to all external and internal storage devices.
In addition to the tortured grammar, I haven’t a clue what blocking TCG commands has got to do with IEEE 1667 as their own web site says:
The IEEE 1667 protocol defines a standard protocol for secure authentication and creation of trust between a secure host and a directly attached Transient Storage Device (TSD), such as a USB flash drive, portable hard drive, or cellular phone. The protocol has only an indirect relationship with data integrity/security, and does not directly address issues of authorization and enforcement.
Nothing about internal storage devices, not about integrity or security, two key features of the Trusted Computing Group’s Opal specification.
By the time you read this I’ll probably have edited Wikipedia to remove the offending text!
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