CAPEC-402
Bypassing ATA Password Security
An adversary exploits a weakness in ATA security on a drive to gain access to the information the drive contains without supplying the proper credentials. ATA Security is often employed to protect hard disk information from unauthorized access. The mechanism requires the user to type in a password before the BIOS is allowed access to drive contents. Some implementations of ATA security will accept the ATA command to update the password without the user having authenticated with the BIOS. This occurs because the security mechanism assumes the user has first authenticated via the BIOS prior to sending commands to the drive. Various methods exist for exploiting this flaw, the most common being installing the ATA protected drive into a system lacking ATA security features (a.k.a. hot swapping). Once the drive is installed into the new system the BIOS can be used to reset the drive password.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-402: Bypassing ATA Password Security: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/402.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/402?via=ask-ai-copy, which lists recent CVEs with the weaknesses it exploits. Cite the sources.Opens a third-party assistant; its answer is its own, not cve.bz's. The prompt holds only this attack pattern's id and public links.
Prerequisites
Access to the system containing the ATA Drive so that the drive can be physically removed from the system.
Mitigations
Avoid using ATA password security when possible.
Use full disk encryption to protect the entire contents of the drive or sensitive partitions on the drive.
Leverage third-party utilities that interface with self-encrypting drives (SEDs) to provide authentication, while relying on the SED itself for data encryption.
Weaknesses it exploits
- CWE-285 Improper Authorization
Recent CVEs with these weaknesses
- 2.1CVE-2026-124621
A vulnerability was determined in kongxin-github Java_Library_Management_System up to 70a6eb6b96fe64575d8051f1a59055bfc5dc5885. This affects the function UpdateAdmin.deleteuser/UpdateAdmin.updateadmin/UpdateAdmin.updatepass/Book.addbook/Bo…
- 5.5CVE-2026-124590
A security vulnerability has been detected in zhangbw409 library_manager_system f6c9d9c96bf5d2a32ef741daeaa29d80e6db166b/56514767a5207caf5e04c2cea379dfaa8cb5f00b. This impacts the function BookController.addBook of the file src/main/java/c…
- 5.3CVE-2026-113702
A security flaw has been discovered in iomad up to 4.5.15/5.0.11/5.1.8/5.2.4. Affected by this vulnerability is the function local_iomad_pluginfile in the library public/local/iomad/lib.php of the component PDF Certificate Handler. The man…
- –CVE-2026-40913
Apache Airflow's public Import Errors API returns the raw parse-failure stack trace to any user with the `ImportError.can_read` permission when the failing file has no registered DAG. This happens when a file fails to parse before any DAG …
- 2.1CVE-2026-124574
A vulnerability was determined in chenyme grok2api up to 3.1.6. This vulnerability affects the function beginSelectionSession of the file backend/internal/application/gateway/video.go of the component Video Job Retry Handler. This manipula…
- 4.3CVE-2026-19307
IBM Sterling B2B Integrator 6.2.1.0 through 6.2.1.2_1 and 6.2.2.0 through 6.2.2.1_1, and IBM Sterling File Gateway 6.2.1.0 through 6.2.1.2_1 and 6.2.2.0 through 6.2.2.1_1 Standard Edition could allow a remote authenticated attacker to acce…
- 8.1CVE-2026-19133
IBM Storage TS4500 Library 1.1.1.6 through 1.12.0.3 could allow a remote authenticated attacker to perform unauthorized account takeover due to improper authorization.
- 6.5CVE-2026-16699
IBM Netezza Appliance 11.3.0.2 Interim Fix 002 through 11.3.1.3 Interim Fix 006 could allow a remote authenticated attacker to change the passwords of other users due to improper authorization.
The newest records naming one of them. Each weakness's page lists them all.
Related attack patterns
- Part of
- CAPEC-401 Physically Hacking Hardware
Examples
The A-FF Repair Station tool is a data recovery utility that can be used for ATA password removal (both High …
The A-FF Repair Station tool is a data recovery utility that can be used for ATA password removal (both High and Maximum level) and firmware area recovery. An adversary with access to this tool could reset the ATA password to bypass this security feature and unlock the hard drive. The adversary could then obtain any data contained within the drive. [REF-702]
An adversary gains physical access to the targeted hard drive and installs it into a system that does not sup…
An adversary gains physical access to the targeted hard drive and installs it into a system that does not support ATA security features. Once the drive is installed in the feature-lacking system, the adversary is able to reset the hard drive password via the BIOS. As a result, the adversary is able to bypass ATA password security and access content on the drive.
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