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I am looking at external sata enclosures for 2.5" drives, there are some with keypad on them and protect the data with pin that is usually limited to around 8 digits. Drive is protected with AES 256 encryption.

How fast can this pin be cracked ? I assume in theory the keypad can be connected to a computer.

I don't know if these sata enclosures usually force a delay after some failed attempts, if someone knows please let me know.

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adrianTNT
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It doesn't matter. If these devices make any sense at all (and use the built-in encryption that modern SSDs and hard drives have):

The device's decryption key is stored within a microcontroller that simply will delete the key if you tried wrong PINs too often.

In other words: although it might maybe only take thousandth of a second to try one PIN, after three PINs (or whatever the manufacturer designed the microcontroller for), the device is bricked and there's effectively no way to recover the data.

Marcus Müller
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  • Yes, that is the obvious expectation, but amazingly most of them have no block/delay protection when entering wrong password. I asked two persons at StarTech and both said there is no protection. So the AES 256 encryption becomes a bad joke when it is protected by an 8 digit pin. Old cell phones pins are more secure than that. – adrianTNT Jan 18 '17 at 17:26