Is it possible to completely wipe the contents on a: >USB drive >Standard hard drive >SSD >SD Card
by discharging a sufficiently large capacitor charged to something like 60V? I know it will disable the motherboard because devices like the USB killer (pic related) work like that. I was thinking of how a spy or hacker can implant a self-destructing server made from a raspberry pi into his target's network which can then completely brick itself to preserve plausible deniability.
I don't intend to actually make this because I have no practical use for such a device, but if it works it couldn't be that hard to do.
No. You're destroying input ports, why the fuck should it wipe the contents? Does your safe gets destroyed if you burn the door to your house?
Ryder Fisher
You probably won't completely wipe the contents. You might corrupt some sectors and you will definitely destroy the controller that reads the data however with specialized recovery hardware you could probably pull some data off the flash chips and or hard driver platters.
So if you wanted to render your drive permanently unreadable to some layman with poor to average technical skill, yeah, your device would do it. If you wanted to prevent law enforcement or governments from recovering your data you're gonna wanna use some other method. This is unsuitable.
Charles Reed
So I'd probably have better luck attaching a firecracker to the SD card slot and having the Pi send a signal to the fuse?
Xavier Fisher
>USB drive >Standard hard drive >SSD >SD Card Overwrite everything with zeroes, if you're paranoid do it multiple times. Some sectors (on the HDD) can be damaged so there may be some leftover data, but usually this won't be enough to be readable, unless you defragmented the drive.
>by discharging a sufficiently large capacitor charged to something like 60V? I know it will disable the motherboard because devices like the USB killer (pic related) work like that. No. You wouldn't erase the contents, you'd just make them not accessible with their usual "connectors" (basically everything that's on these devices that's not used to actually store data). You're not thinking of erasing data, you're thinking of destroying it.
>I was thinking of how a spy or hacker can implant a self-destructing server made from a raspberry pi into his target's network which can then completely brick itself to preserve plausible deniability. You'd have to add hardware that would destroy it, they can't do that out of themselves.
Eli Richardson
Thermite. A Pi would be easy enough to set up with a igniter from the GPIO, just add steel wool and your Pi is gone in a second if the need arises.
Ayden Ramirez
How about using a solenoid driven by an overcharged capacitor to physically smash the SD card upon receiving a command from the pi then? This is after the usual software wipes of course.
That seems like a ridiculously over-complicated solution when you could just use a good ole fashioned hammer.
Or you know, do the best, tried and true method of melting down the hard drive platter or flash memory. Grab yourself a small blowtorch and go to town.
Ian Clark
this thermite will most likely work even if they try to freeze it, which they probably will in order to read the RAM
Grayson Wood
Unrelated, but i dropped a usb stick in water, is it fucked?
Carter Ward
Use Full Disk Encryption.
Forget the password.
Elijah Anderson
>Standard hard drive I find that drilling a hole through it does a pretty decent job
Blake Howard
Lmao just delete the contents and fill it with meaningless data or porn until it overwrites all the previous data
Aaron Jones
>>SSD Yes. SATA secure erase.
Angel Cooper
Sufficiently large? Yeah absolutely possible. Other posters in this thread have no imagination. You could discharge a tremendous amount of current into a flyback and pull several hundred thousands volts directly across the enitre assembly, turning it into a stream of plasma within a few microseconds.
Luis Allen
>firecracker use thermite just in case
Lincoln Robinson
A few passes of dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb should do the trick.
Eli Young
You could just smash the thing. I guarantee you right now that unless you're suspected of having national secrets on there, nobody is going to try to retrieve data from the splinters.
Joseph Thomas
he's talking about a device that can self destruct remotely user
Joshua Murphy
what if you connect the capacitor directly to the flash chip contacts?
Jordan Reed
Some disks even auto-encrypt their contents, so the data can be instantly deleted if you set a command which causes the drive to forget the key.
Jonathan Nelson
Stop downloading cp you degenerate.
Nicholas Brooks
Flash memory is a scam. It stores a probabilistic approximation of your data anyway.
Adam Clark
This.
Keep in mind it's supposed to be a disposable device, like a dagger made of ice if you will.
Jaxon Martin
No that guy but a measly solenoid like that won't reliably destroy the contents of the SD card even when it's over driven.
Dylan Harris
/thread
Grayson Martinez
This is what TRIM is for
Grayson Baker
No I've washed and dryed quite a few through the laundry over the years
Jeremiah Harris
> thinks TRIM is used to securely delete deleted data lul brainlet
Sebastian Jones
>USB drive >SSD >SD Card Use Dremel. >Standard hard drive Yes, use heat. Also crash the platters.
David Reed
>I don't know how NAND flash works this isn't a spinning disk grandma
Jeremiah Rivera
no
even if you zero a drive you are still writing zeros on it
Sebastian Gonzalez
> has never used data recovery tools to test his "TRIM" > citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.187.3062&rep=rep1&type=pdf > The ACS-2 draft standard [4] provide a “TRIM” command that informs drive that a range of LBAs is no longer in use, but this does not have any reliable effect on data security you were saying what brainlet?
If you want to absolutely make sure there is no way in hell to recover /any/ data you will need to chemically dissolve the platters/flash chips.
Wyatt Ortiz
The issue is that you'll destroy the control IC before the voltage reaches the memory cells, you can absolutely destroy every single memory cell by applying 12V to the logic. If the circuit has insufficient protections in place you could just apply a high voltage to the data pins and cycle through all addresses, this is probably plausible with compact flash
Jayden Evans
>chemically dissolve
That takes too long.
Landon Murphy
I believe you're supposed to use DBAN to wipe data.
Dominic Russell
There is a tool called shred that overwrites the drive with zero.
Julian Sanchez
That is the fastest reliable way to remove any chance of data recovery. The other would be shredding it with an industrial HDD shredder which takes longer and is not really a viable alternative considering the premise.
Ethan Price
OK guys, i posted When it comes to drive wiping any flash media it's hard because the sectors on the flash medium aren't reused when wiping files or free space even.
Using EnCase the only way I was able to not recover all data was by wiping the entire drive and not just the free space. My test had 1,000 mp3s that i deleted securely and insecurely and wiped. I was able to recover 3 of them and all the file names.
The best way around this is to encrypt the drive and then wipe the header of the encryption when the drive is going to be disposed of, etc
Cooper Ward
You could grind it to bits and pieces and burn them.
Ethan Gonzalez
That isn't exactly fast or really possible in a scenario described by OP. It's much more realistic having a small vat of acid above the HDD that can cover the entire HDD. Granted it would still take a few minutes tops depending on concentration and temperature of the acid but much more realistic than grinding or shredding it.
