These self-destructing SSDs will physically destroy the NAND flash on your command

Shawn Knight

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It’s one thing to have your personal notebook filled with family photos, music and movies come up missing. It’s a different beast entirely when that missing notebook contains business information, trade secrets or the login credentials of your employer.

In those instances, it’d be great to have a self-destructing hard drive akin to something out of a James Bond movie. As it turns out, that technology already exists and it comes from a company called SecureDrives.

The company lists four different solid state drive models that offer up a mixture of 256-bit AES CBC hardware encryption, two-factor authentication, GSM command over encryption key flipping and physical fracturing of the NAND flash storage.

-destructing ssds nuke text code word ssd nand flash data self-destructing securedrives

There are a few different instances where the drive will trigger its self-destruct mechanism. For example, trying to physically open the drive (it’s sealed during the production process) will initiate physical fracturing.

What’s more, user’s can configure the drive to destruct if removed from your system’s SATAII connector, self-destruct when the internal battery runs completely empty (some may think a dead battery would disable security features) and even remotely kill the drive via SMS sent from any phone.

I suspect these drives won’t be cheap but if data security is your top priority, they certainly seem capable of the job. Just don’t accidentally trigger the self-destruct mode as there’s absolutely no way to recover your data once the deed has been done.

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Like something out of a James Bond movie. Completely pointless to most of us but awesome none the less. I wonder how the fracturing actually occurs?
 
Tempting product, but I'll be willing to bet the asking price on these things will be just as impressive as their function.
 
Peter Graves from beyond the grave approves...
phelpstape.jpg
 
Like something out of a James Bond movie. Completely pointless to most of us but awesome none the less. I wonder how the fracturing actually occurs?
Looks like what happens when you give it too much voltage, that might be what is happening just overclock the voltage till poof.
 
Like something out of a James Bond movie. Completely pointless to most of us but awesome none the less. I wonder how the fracturing actually occurs?
Looks like what happens when you give it too much voltage, that might be what is happening just overclock the voltage till poof.

But then how will that work if the battery has gone flat? I'm guessing it's more complex then just increasing the voltage until poof.
 
But then how will that work if the battery has gone flat? I'm guessing it's more complex then just increasing the voltage until poof.
Maybe, I was just taking a guess at it from the look. I'm pretty sure it is more complex but I have no idea what exactly it does.
 
In the US, the FBI threw a temper tantrum about unbreakable encryption announced by google and apple; it will be interesting to see if the FBI has a complete nervous breakdown about these. A brute force attempt at breaking the encryption on the "unbreakable encryption" devices with the FBI's computing power certainly has a minimal chance of succeeding, but nothing will "crack" this means of protection.
 
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