{"id":212154,"date":"2017-05-24T10:55:40","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T08:55:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=212154"},"modified":"2017-05-24T10:56:32","modified_gmt":"2017-05-24T08:56:32","slug":"security-flaw-found-in-ssd-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/212154-security-flaw-found-in-ssd-technology.html","title":{"rendered":"Security flaw found in SSD technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>an exploitable flaw in\u00a0SSD design.<\/p>\n

The flaw makes SSDs which use multi-cell level (MLC) technology vulnerable to attacks, which cause reduced lifespan and data corruption.<\/p>\n

Single-level cell (SLC) drives are not affected by the flaw, but faster MLC SSDs are vulnerable due to the method they use to write data to their\u00a0flash cells.<\/p>\n

Unlike SLC drives, MLC SSDs write data into a buffer from a flash cell instead of writing from the flash controller.<\/p>\n

This process allows the written data to be intercepted and corrupted as it is being written, which causes file corruption and can reduce the lifespan of the drive.<\/p>\n

SSD\u00a0manufacturers can fix the\u00a0flaw by writing data from the flash controller, but this would increase latency.<\/p>\n

Low latency is a major feature of MLC drives.<\/p>\n

The research did not state whether triple-level cell (TLC) drives were affected, but according to ExtremeTech<\/strong><\/a>, the technology could also be vulnerable due to its similar programming process.<\/p>\n

ExtremeTech also noted that the vulnerability affects 2D NAND manufactured below the 40nm process node, meaning 3D NAND devices using single-shot programming are unaffected – as they do not use two-stage programming.<\/p>\n

However, once the manufacturing process for 3D NAND advances past 40nm, manufacturers are expected to return to two-stage programming.<\/p>\n

Now read:\u00a0WD launches SSDs in South Africa \u2013 Pricing and details<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered an exploitable flaw in SSD design.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":171515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,27],"tags":[43404,381,23613,23505,43406,19342,463,43408,793],"class_list":["post-212154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","category-security","tag-2d","tag-3d","tag-exploit","tag-flaw","tag-mlc","tag-nand","tag-security-2","tag-slc","tag-ssd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212154"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212162,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212154\/revisions\/212162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}