Re: Hard Drive Destruct System?

From: mike3 (mike4ty4_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 11/27/04 

Date: 27 Nov 2004 01:17:24 -0800

ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld (Moe Trin) wrote in message news:<slrncqfbjh.fl0.ibuprofin@compton.phx.az.us>...
> In article <1d54b7e4.0411251822.729ae8cc@posting.google.com>, mike3 wrote:
>
> >Would this make a good mechanism to securely destroy a hard drive?
> >
> >1. Crash the heads into the platters with the drive at top speed
>
> Modern (since the early 1990s) hard drives have a very hard and smooth
> surface on the platters. Crashes do occur in real life, and normally
> cause no harm. "Top speed" implies the disk powered up and running
> normally (heads NOT parked). How do you propose to cause the 50+Gs to
> crash the heads while in this condition? Hard drives have gotten a lot
> more resilient since Reynold Johnson's "baloney slicer" system in 1956.
>

Well, you would have to install the mechanism in a very good clean
room as you would have to open up the drive. My idea would be
something that applies direct pressure to the heads -- shouldn't be
too difficult to make. The point of the destruct system is when you no
longer have physical access to the drive to destroy it with "by hand"
methods -- such as when teh computer's been stolen.

> >2. Seek them from one edge of the platters to the other back and forth
> >to \
> > ensure good grinding
>
> See above. Every time you power down a drive, you "crash" the heads
> (admittedly at a slower speed) - how much damage to the heads does that
> cause? To the media?
>

You 'land' the heads -- they 'park' off the media. 'Crashing' the
heads means that you drop them onto the platter directly when it's
spinnig at top speed.

> >3. Pump a concentrated hydrogen/oxygen mix into the hard drive platter
> >chamber
> > while the heads are grinding away.
>
> If you are going to be cracking the case (airflow through the vent is
> meant to equalize pressures, not cause an air exchange), why not open
> it up the rest of the way, and yank the platters so that you can put
> them directly in a fire and melt them.
>

You keep missing the point -- I'm talking about installing a *self
destruct mechanism* to destroy the hard drive remotely when physical
access has been lost. All you'd need to star thte mechaism would be
just to broadcast the specific code that that particular drive
recognizes over a great distance, and you could neutralize the drive.

> >Would the heat from the grinding be enough to ignite the H2/O2 mix and
> >ensure that data can't be recovered?
>
> No. Not enough energy in the H2/O2 that would remain in a typical hard
> disk without exploding and blowing open the case. Such an explosion
> might damage the drive to make it unusable, but wouldn't damage the media
> enough to preclude data recovery.
>
> >Would this mechanism be good enough to keep copies of a large company's
> >trade secrets from a competing large company?
>
> No.
>
> 1. Go find a recent copy of a hardware book such as Scott Mueller's
> "Upgrading and Repairing PCs" from Que, Roche's "Hardware Bible", and
> learn about hard disk construction.
>
> 2. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html for a
> classic paper on removing information from computer disks.
>
> Old guy

So, what would you need for a secure _self destruct_ mechanism? That
means, to DESTROY the disk by COMMAND CODES. How about a chemical
destruction mechanism? You'd have two chemicals on either side of the
drive, which are normally inert, but when they mix, become a highly
corrosive brew that eats the metal of a hard drive. Then all you have
to do is have the drive in a sealed bay with the chemicals on each
side. Once the proper command is recieved, the chemicals would pour
into where the drive is, destroying it. The problem: Does anyone know
if there's any chemicals that do that?

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