A New Technique to Quickly Erase Hard Drives

RockDoctor writes "Stories about 'wiped' hard drives appearing on eBay (and other channels) and being stuffed with personably-identifiable data are legion; rarer are spy planes having to land on enemy territory, but it happened in 2001 to a US spy plane over an un-declared enemy (China, and that's a topic in itself). Dark Reading reports the development of a technique to securely wipe a hard drive in seconds, and which is safe for flying. (The safe for flying criterion rules out things like fun with packing the drives in thermite. Also thermiting the drives may not erase the platters to the standard required, which is moderately interesting itself."

Computer systems and their hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

can be rendered inoperable in seconds - the method's name is "slashdotting".
 
How curious that the anti-bot please-type-in-this-word word is kilobyte for this post.

In related news . . .

[UnknowingFool]

Dozens of prank hard drive erasing have occurred within the Georgia Institute of Technology's nerd population. This was preceded by large orders of extremely powerful magnets. When questioned, the victims only had this to say:
"Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!"

not good enough..

[Adult film producer]

When I need to protect my data from spying eyes I secure a 500m sata cable into the back port and slowly, very carefully; feed the hard drive into the event horizon. Giving it a good yank after a few minutes and reeling it back in.. the drive returns to normal working condition afterwards.

It's really simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use Maxtor harddisk drives, those things destroy themselves all the time!

DMCA!

[fluch]

Seal the HD with a sticker that says reading the content of this HD is prohibited by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That will show them! :)

Easy solution

[JanneM]

If thermite doesn't do a good job, go one better and make the platters out of thermite. Make the motor axle out of magnesium, add a fuse and you're set.

If the burning is a problem, just make the platters from cheddar cheese, and add a mouse in a cage adjacent to the drive. Open the hatch, and problem is solved.

Harddrives in an airplane?

[reklusband]

Aren't they specialized drives anyways? Couldn't they just get the company that makes these drives add an internal shredder+heat source? Like a mini car compacter that then puts voltage through the whole thing. Hell you could probably do it so it if the wrong encryption key is entered, the drive self destructs. Alternate solution. Put the drives in a raid. Throw one of the drives OUT OF THE AIRPLANE. Destroy the other.

Other Georgia Tech innovations

[dpbsmith]

And in further news, Georgia Tech scientists have designed a printer with an integral shredder that shreds all output continuously as it is printed.

They have also designed a novel camera which, instead of a digital CCD array, uses a tough, thin strip of polyester polymer coated with a chemical, light-sensitive substrate. Intended for spy applications, if caught the captured images can be destroyed in seconds simply by opening the back of the camera.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

DRM

[elgee]

Now the RIAA/MPAA/FUD are going to demand that such a device be put into every possible digital recording device.

Attempt to copy a protected product and BAM, your hard drive is toast.

Re:Erasing, not Voodoo

[jhines]

If I'm getting paid by the hour, 35 passes is fine by me, and I will watch every single one of them to make sure it really ran. Can't cut corners when it counts.

Re:New technique?

[eqisow]

What I want to know is, is it more effective than a really big hammer?

Re:Computer systems and their hard drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone that has watched enough Hollywood movies knows that it is usually enough to shoot a couple of bullets into the monitor to destroy all sensitive data.

You never have to worry about arcane details such as hard drives, magnetic field strength etc etc.

Re:Other Georgia Tech innovations

[Dynedain]

How can that be news? The shrinter is already available from thinkgeek [thinkgeek.com].

Re:I've got a near-flawless erasure method.

[gweihir]

Go buy a nice 3" diameter 1" thick n50 Neodymium-boron magnet. Condiering it's strong enough to attract steel pots and pans from ten to twenty feet away, just setting one of these bad boys on a hard drive will almost 100% efectively wipe it the fuck out, not to mention most likely fuck up the heads on the drive, making it totally useless.

Also it will keep the plane attached to the steel in the concrete of the landing strip and thereby prevent it from falling into the enemies hands in the first place. A sound engineering solution!

Re:New technique?

[fish waffle]

According to the article, yes it is more effective than a hammer.

What about a magnetic hammer?

Re:There's powerful and then there's powerful...

[tomhudson]

agreed, but its obvious that the original poster never read TFA (or they were doing a TFAD :-)

I hate porn pirates.

Well, I can't see too many people getting excited over porn featuring pirates myself, but "arrrrgh, matey, to each their own ..."

Re:not good enough..

[proverbialcow]

I do that with my laptop, but then I always have to reset the clock.

Re:Easy solution

[Mr. Freeman]

That's a good idea.... until you pull 5 Gs trying to avoid an enemy fighter and kill the mouse.

Equip the mouse with a flight suit though, and you're all set.

Re:First question:

[Anonymous brave dude]

umm, it's 10443888814131525066917527107166243825799642490473 83780384233483283953907971557456848826811934997558 34089010671443926283798757343818579360726323608785 13652779459569765437099983403615901343837183144280 70011855946226376318839397712745672334684344586617 49680790870580370407128404874011860911446797778359 80290066869389768817877859469056301902609405995794 53432823469303026696443059025015972399867714215541 69383555988529148631823791443449673408781187263949 64751001890413490084170616750936683338505510329720 88269550769983616369411933015213796825837188091833 65675122131849284636812555022599830041234478486259 56744921946170238065059132456108257318353800876086 22102834270197698202313169017678006675195485079921 63641937028537512478401490715913545998279051339961 15517942711068311340905842728842797915548497829543 23534517065223269061394905987693002122963395687782 87894844061600741294567491982305057164237715481632 13806310459029161369267083428564407304478999719017 81465763473223850267253059899795996090799469201774 62481771844986745565925017832907047311943316555080 75682218465717463732968849128195203174570024409266 16910874148385078411929804522981857338977648103126 08590300130241346718972667321649151113160292078173 8033436090243804708340403154190336
different keys.

Re:Easy solution

[modecx]

I think the better solution would be to make the drive platters out of a thermite-cheddar composite. Once the mice eat the cheese we can then ignite the mice for maximum data security.

Re:Violation of Chinese airspace

[Dunbal]

What the **** is the US government doing violating Chinese airspace without permission or clearance?

This is an act of war.


      This has never bothered the US before, why should it now?

Re:RISK of quantum computing taking off

[michaeldot]

Yes, lines 1, 2 and 4 are correct. They are Slashdot usernames.

Line 3 is obviously a Digg imposter.

Re:New technique?

[Walt Dismal]

I've patented my new technique and offered it to the military.

Step 1. In emergency, overwrite data with Chinese porn.

Step 2. Actually, there's no need for step 2.

Re:you read the article more closely!

[Doctor Memory]

Think of a flying datacenter with rackmount systems from a variety of different vendors

A variety of different vendors that all have to meet a spec, namely that the drive must be mounted in a non-metallic carrier of such-and-such dimensions. Or just specify that each drive must be mounted in a "Type SZW data carrier", and it's up to the primary contractor (who also supplies the SZWs) to make it all work. Either way, it's all pretty trivial: the Navy wants one of these mega-erasers for its P-3s, so (say) Lockheed figures out they're all using 5 1/4" drives, so designs an enclosure to fit. Navy then institutes an upgrade program for all specified aircraft, and new drives are obtained and installed into said enclosures. Not a terribly complicated retrofit, and for guaranteed security (if they can prove it), I'm sure they can justify the cost. Sure, there'll be a ton of engineering busy-work for somebody, figuring out how many drives are affected and designing the enclosure and associated cabling changes and documentation updates, but that's what new hires are for... ;)

Re:yes

[Kreigaffe]

Better yet: Replace 'bogus information' with 'goatse.cx'

Nothing like tricking someone into looking at ol' goatse --- except tricking someone into spending millions and millions of dollars to look at ol' goatse.

Re:you read the article more closely!

[nacturation]

They do need one device per drive. You missed the part about the drive being automatically pulled into the device

The six disc CD changer in my car pulls CDs automatically into one device. I'm sure this technology will never progress to such an advanced stage though.