Recovering hard drive data, which is an integral part of computer forensics and plays a key part of computer crime investigations, is getting significantly harder as sophisticated encryption and data protection mechanisms become routinely employed. The trend of encrypting data is growing due to market pressures and legal requirements for privacy laws, especially in the financial and medical industries. As the cost to produce secure hard drives decreases, it will become standard for all computers to employ advanced data at rest protection methods. As a result of these market forces, it will become nearly impossible to gather data from hard drives, especially in the timely or covert manner required by many investigations. To aid in this arms race between secure data and law enforcement access needs, Cybernet has created a tool that simplifies and automates accessing protected hard drives. Cybernet’s Automated Drive Unlocking Tool (CADUT) comprises a software component that stores a database of known hard drive weaknesses and automated methods to apply them, and combines this with a hardware component designed to detect and attack implementation weaknesses of an unknown drive model using high-speed cracking and protocol fuzzing methods. As newer drive locking technologies and models are released, the database and hardware will be augmented as needed to remain competitive. This tool often accesses the drive Service Area or the firmware to retrieve or reset drive locking passwords. The end result is a tool that can unlock supported hard drives.