Self-Destructing Solid State Drives

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Some company is selling a SSD that will self-destruct if you text it. The best part? It costs about $1,750 with accessories and $50 a year for your GSM subscription. :eek:

They would be fairly unremarkable SSDs, were it not for the ability to delete their data by sending an SMS message to a special self-destruct number like some kind of Mission Impossible spymaster. And that data's not just wiped. The SSDs are like piggy banks — once you've made the decision to delete the data, the drive is physically destroyed, with the NAND flash chips and security controller broken inside the drive's enclosure.
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So when I am on my death bed, this is going to be what runs my computer... Goodbye browser history and everything else!
 
Wow... bunch of ways for the drive to kill itself.

Battery level gets too low and loses GSM signal for too long.

So if the cell tower you are near gets knocked out by say.. a tornado or other natural disaster you can kiss your data goodbye. The same thing goes for the battery getting too low.

Apparently somebody didn't think this through very well.
 
cyclone3d said:
Wow... bunch of ways for the drive to kill itself.

Battery level gets too low and loses GSM signal for too long.

So if the cell tower you are near gets knocked out by say.. a tornado or other natural disaster you can kiss your data goodbye. The same thing goes for the battery getting too low.

Apparently somebody didn't think this through very well.
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Those functions are optional. You can turn them on and off.
 
I can see it now...

You're working away on a big project for work or your thesis and BAM your SSD gets a spam text message, so long data... unless it's looking for a very specific string of numerals as a passcode to destroy the data.
 
What is the point of this exactly? All you have to do is encrypt your drive and when you want the data to be destroyed just "lose" your key.
 
When the FBI confiscates your computer be like "I'd like to call my lawyer, please"
 
I bet it really just texts a guy named Rocko who comes to your house and busts your shit open and then eats the drive.

that would be much cooler.
 
I have to admit this is a much better idea than that guy who tried to hide his data from the police by writing "broken" on his hard drives.
 
doz said:
Telemarketers........
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LOL

"Act NOW and get a SECOND one for $1500 (shippingandhandlingfeeof50,000.00notincluded.Maynotbeavailibleinallareas.Guaranteetoworknotguaranteed.Epeengrowthnottestedonanimals.
 
Dimethyltryptamine said:
Encrypt it with what? Isn't TrueCrypt no longer secure? What should we be using?
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I don't think it's that they are no longer insecure, I just know that they arne't updating it. I'm using an older version of truecrypt. As for if there's a key somewhere out there, I'm not sure.
 
GaryJohnson said:
What is the point of this exactly? All you have to do is encrypt your drive and when you want the data to be destroyed just "lose" your key.
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because many believe, including me, that not all encryption is secure any more...not that i have anything important enough,i don't think, that anyone would spend the time or resources on to unencrypted a drive.
 
Wow really? I can do this with a $1 blasting cap, a 20 cent M80 and a disposable cell phone worth $50
 
ShamisOMally said:
Wow really? I can do this with a $1 blasting cap, a 20 cent M80 and a disposable cell phone worth $50
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Yeah.. but do you want to blow up your computer in the process?

To fry one of these, all you would really need is a nice capacitor and a circuit setup to discharge the capacitor so it will fry the components.

Now the whole idea of remote calling to do this might not be such a good idea with a disposable phone unless you don't mind losing a drive multiple times a week from wrong numbers or telemarketers.
 
Over-engineered and overpriced garbage. I'm sure half the people around here can come up with a better [H]omegrown solution.
 
MrGuvernment said:
because many believe, including me, that not all encryption is secure any more...not that i have anything important enough,i don't think, that anyone would spend the time or resources on to unencrypted a drive.
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Considering the extremely large number of eyes on the public audit that is ongoing for Truecrypt 7.1a, you have to go pretty far down the rabbit hole of paranoia to consider it untrustworthy.

http://istruecryptauditedyet.com/
http://threatpost.com/audit-project-releases-verified-repositories-of-truecrypt-7-1a
https://www.grc.com/misc/truecrypt/truecrypt.htm
http://cpj.org/blog/2014/06/journalists-can-safely-use-truecrypt-for-now.php
 
Hiring someone to do the job is cheaper. Just put the money in an escrow account only to be released when the person finishes the job.
 
On a different note, this will be the hard drive of choice for high ranking government officials. Take the IRS out. "My hard drive crashed." On a completely different note, this will allows people to randomly delete huge amounts of government data by mass spamming the number range this company would use with every conceivable combo of characters.
 
Dimethyltryptamine said:
Encrypt it with what? Isn't TrueCrypt no longer secure? What should we be using?
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Its no longer maintained, that didn't automatically make it insecure, but the developers want to divorce themselves from anyone coming to them about it so they made a cya comment disowning responsiblity right away..

I would say there are two concerns with truecrypt, the resulting encrypted files/drives. And the program itself. On an uncompromised computer, the actual encrypted files/drives are probably secure. What is more vulnerable is the program itself to lateral attacks looking for passwords/keys or easier ways to obtain those likely using OS/chip exploits that become revealed over time. This is how Truecrypt will actually become unsecure first.


So as long as you trust the PC on which you make encypted files/volumes. The files/volumes themselves are probably robust for a while yet.
 
This is more of an enterprise or corp secrets thing. So if you have corp secrets on a laptop you have a way to remotely wipe it if it gets stolen.
 
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