Re: Hard Drive Destruct System?
From: Al Dykes (adykes_at_panix.com)
Date: 11/27/04
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Date: 27 Nov 2004 15:18:12 -0500
In article <1d54b7e4.0411270117.2b333870@posting.google.com>,
mike3 <mike4ty4@yahoo.com> wrote:
>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?
On a much more practical level, there are encrypted file systems, and
NTFS has an encryption option. Properly administered, data on these
machines will be useless to the bad Guys.
I've seen a descrtption of miniscule explosive charges that are stuck
to the top of electronics chips and wired under software control. When
the charge goes off the chip is completely destroyed. If that chip
happened to contain the crypto keys for the data on the disk, then
your data is gone gone gone.
I believe IBM makes (or made) laptop hard disks that did encryption on
the drive electronics, and the driver software asked the user for a
PIN code before the laptop could boot up. If the user forgot his PIN
and called IBM, all they could do is to reformat the disk. No james
Bond stuff required.
-- a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m ----
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