DEF CON 23 - Zoz - And That's How I Lost My Other Eye...Explorations in Data Destruction (Fixed)

[@lohphat]

How about simply giving it to United Airlines as checked baggage. Abandon all hope of seeing the data again.

[@Funnywargamesman]

LMAO

[@no-handle-available-null]

Isn't irradiating really a feasible thing?

[@CGoody564]

no. that will alter data, not destroy

[@cosmonaut379]

Cory Goodman if you go that route there is no such thing as destruction of data or anything, everything is technically just altered but yeah for all practical realistic purposes that can easily destroy it

[@FSimon766]

how fitting

[@prjndigo]

Anybody who welds rails on the railroad will tell you precisely how you failed on thermite... you have to light the BOTTOM first or the fuel protects the "work".

[@ilikepie1974]

thats actually quite good information to know

[@riftalope]

On the nose! I'd also encase it for a shaped charge. Cut through the discs.

[@gregc2222]

There are dozens of videos here on youtube that contradict what you say here. They all light the top of the thermite charge. It all turns into one very hot charge of liquid iron. Where you light it really doesn't matter.

[@9393jack]

@@ilikepie1974 Right... because you will certainly need to use thermite one day. Life's just a Bond film for you, ain't it?

[@DieselRamcharger]

@@riftalope traditional method would be use a flower pot, light through the drainage hole.

[@NetRolller3D]

52:40 Prototype of the system eventually deployed in the Galaxy Note 7.

[@Thefreakyfreek]

NetRolller3D coment underated

[@alexduke5402]

Plot twist. The phone is just protecting your data because you were getting hacked

[@EnraEnerato]

@@alexduke5402 Shht, the 3letter clubs don't like it if you tell about how it worked, thats also why they forced em to stop producing them this way.

[@kirschkern8260]

UpLoad this video in 1080p or even 4k gosh!

[@ChaplainDaveSparks]

I suppose a small thermonuclear warhead would violate the ground rules?

[@evknucklehead]

Pretty sure even the small ones wouldn't fit into a 1U rack. Or pass the seismic sensor requirement. Or the not harming other equipment requirement. Or the...

[@klausstock8020]

Polonium-210 might just work. The unassembled pieces will become quite hot already, so heavy cooling would mandatory all the time. When the time comes, cut off the colling, assemble the pieces and there you go. You don't need the gun-type assembly methods or the implosion assembly method (as used in conventional nuclear warheads), some spring-loaded mechanism which pushes your Polonium-210 pieces together should do. The already frigging-hot Polonium (a lone particle of 1g will already heat up to about 500°C (932°F)) will get even hotter when lumped together, melt when it reaches 254°C (489°F) and then boil at 962°C (1764°C). It might a very, very good idea to have it (together with the drive) in a very sealed high-pressure compartment. The "nice" part about such a Polonium-210 would be that it just generates heat (140W per gram of Polonium-210, so 100g of of this stuff could generate 14kW in a very small volume; note that 100g is the worldwide yearly production of Po-210), but no nuclear explosion. Bonus fun: while Po-210 is r not a chemical toxicant, it is a radiological one. In fact, less than 1µg (no, not milligrams, like the deadliest chemical poisons) is sufficient to kill a human. I'd expect a TLA agent to be somehow...reluctant to open an enclosure with a hard drive and enough Po-210 to kill 100 million people. There is one estimate that the LD50 of Po-210 is 50ng (yes, nano-gram) when digested and 10ng when inhaled (remember, the Po-210 inside your sealed pressure compartment is now boiling metal), so according to that estimate, 100g could poison 2 billion people, of which 1 billion would die. Another estimate for the LD50 is around 90ng, which would reduce the number of affected persons by a few 100 millions. Note that while Po-210 is highly radioactive and very deadly when inside your body, the radiation is quite harmless when the stuff is outside your body. A sheet of paper is sufficient to shield you from alpha radiation, as is the layer of dead skin cells on your skin. However, your skin only protects against the radiation, the Polonium itself will happily diffuse through your skin (or, for example, latex gloves) Verdict: yes, it could possibly work, but would be insane.

[@dafoex]

evknucklehead Don't forget not harming the meat equipment

[@At-M]

isn't 50kg the critical mass? good luck getting that into 1U :D

[@Aaron-zu3xn]

just grind your own disk into powder and thermite the powder

[@_lime.]

Pull the chad move and just store everything on volatile memory.

[@privateger]

Then you have a problem with freezing attacks.

[@kfftfuftur]

@@privateger considering that you would need to flip a switch anyway you could just flip the powerswitch to shut everything off.

[@privateger]

@@kfftfuftur You uh...do know what a freezing attack is, right?

[@Stoney3K]

@@privateger Volatile memory is easier and faster to overwrite with random data to wipe it if there is a security mechanism to trigger it. They can freeze attack all they want, because all you find on the memory is garbage data.

[@privateger]

@@Stoney3K You most probably do not have such a security mechanism set up and probably won't have the time to trigger it anyway.

[@CGoody564]

*goes to get food* *BOOM* ...fuck, i forgot to bring my laptop

[@tizoro3]

Cory Goodman Doesn't make any sense but ok

[@krustbag1039]

tizoro3, watch the video, it'll make sense.

[@Frosty-oj6hw]

For anyone wondering this version has fixed audio.

[@joebaldwin3347]

One day I'll get to go to Defcon (I live in the UK) and I can only hope Zoz is still doing talks as they are always my favourites. Another classic. Thanks

[@DedmenMiller]

14:50 im just imagining that happening in a datacenter with a rack full of 24-drive fileservers

[@cobalt2489]

Blazing fast data delivery

[@everybot-it]

will be getting quite hot in there. On a more serious note: will the reaction consume environmental oxygen?

[@Das_Unterstrich]

15:01 240 frames counts as highspeed, technology developed fast over those 5 years

[@MetroidChild]

Just put a very small blasting cap on each memory chip of the SSD, it'll be easily contained and the chips will end up in hundreds of unrecoverable pieces, even something like using a violently burning resistor might work wonders.

[@ghostlight69420]

No no no...prison IS regulatory hell. What you are experiencing is regulatory purgatory.

[@Squizziles]

7 years later but HDD destruction really is just the mechanical equivalent to actually murdering someone and burying the body 😂

[@DaGhost141]

You just gotta love Zoz, this guy is amazing.

[@xapemanx]

well done audio's nice on this one ;) hats off to the editor

[@christurnblom4825]

When he mentioned those Seagate drive QC issues, that explained a lot for me. I had one that was just fine until I got to about 65% full, then it failed. I opened it up after trying every non-invasive method and there was actually a piece of dust or metal sliver under the platinum layer! I thought it was a one in ten thousand thing but now I know. I would have warrantied it but it failed 2 months after the warranty was up.

[@inadaizz]

41:40 **checks headphones** oooh. lol Excellent talk. Thanks for upload

[@danpowell806]

Worth noting is that while your silence can't be used against you in court, any data destruction mechanism you have in place can be. Capone went to jail for tax evasion, DPR could easily have been put away for life on explosives charges.

[@cosmicraysshotsintothelight]

Destroying one's own data is nothing even close to being like evading known tax debt by running off to Florida. One cannot be charged criminally for this. They have to have already observed and gathered and gained proof of your illicit computer or online activity to even come at you to start with. McCarthy-like finger pointing is not enough.

[@danpowell806]

"One cannot be charged criminally for this" is the kind of advice that nobody should accept unless they are paying a lawyer for it. But since this data destruction seems specifically intended as a response to having the physical drive seized by surprise, the government could retire all such criminals just by pretending to seize drives, causing the actor to destroy their entire data and backups, then not charging them with any crime.

[@cosmicraysshotsintothelight]

Data destruction of another's data is illegal. Destruction of one's own property is not, and what one sets as the triggering element for a decision to do so is where "intelligence" comes in.

[@nikushim6665]

I have seen multiple panels over the years on this subject, just about every one ignores induction heating. Its simple, and it will burn off the magnetic coating in seconds, without the massive fire or chemical hazards.

[@snowdaysrule]

I know that a cd will "self destruct" if spun at a sufficiently high RPM. I wonder how difficult it would be to do the same to the platters in the hard drive? I doubt the spindle motor built into the drive would be powerfull enough to accomplish this, but it would be pretty cool if it could! Then the drives could just be programmed to destroy themselves

[@realcore]

Wasnt there a malware a while back that intentionally ripped the drives apart by shaking them violently?

[@samwansitdabet6630]

those were uranium centrifuges

[@jamcdonald120]

The key to thermite is that its not an explosion really just a hot metal, you have to make the metal fall onto the platter. your internal solution should work in a 2u data server with vertical disks. also, you have to take the drive top off for best results

[@railgap]

take away: specify drives with glass platters

[@andrewyork3869]

Agreed I wish he had tested thermite with SSD, I mean come on....

[@MauranKilom]

Unless you actually grind the pieces to dust, it's not very safe still. Bending, chopping and locally scratching/puncturing make it more annoying to recover data but not physically impossible. Almost none of the methods he presented would fulfil data erasure standards (exceptions being thermite if the conductivity brought the entire platter over curie temperature and possibly explosion-welded platters).

[@halfofakebab1659]

Thermite against an SSD would be an easy win, there's no challenge. Just plastic, silicon, and tiny pieces of metals.

[@andrewyork3869]

I would walk with a light step there. Not much is know about that, I would assume yes. However there is no knowing for sure.

[@therideneverends1697]

@@MauranKilom It really is nuts how well these things retain information. like they can bring data out of a thing that barely resembles a disk anymore. im interested in reading how these things go in the long term, like for example celuloid film breaks down within decades under normal conditions, magnetic film on the other hand is rock solid. i wonder where this type of stuff or even SSDs falls in

[@chopinbloc]

38:27 That's encouraging. You could mount, say four of them at the top of a rack and fuck up every drive in every server in the rack.

[@StephenOwen]

Make SURE to stay tuned for the incredible last half of this talk with explosively formed penetrators!

[@easymac79]

I would not want to be in a booby-trapped datacenter during a lightning storm.

[@gordslater]

"you're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off"

[@FennecTECH]

replace the explosion with dropping the keys and restoring encryption id rather not get destracted and my laptop explodes because i walked away C:

[@markpenrice6253]

Yeah... focus on nuking the machine's RAM and CPU registers, plus the NVRAM of the controller, instead of the entire hard drive. If the keys are not kept anywhere else, and are sufficiently random that you have no hope of memorising them (or you never see them in the first place), rubber hose decryption is useless and the data on the platters will be indistinguishable from white noise. Assuming the key isn't kept on an unencrypted part of the drive as well, of course...

[@PaulMansfield]

Where's the fun in that?

[@Rezenbekk]

@Serenity Laboratories if you want to *destroy* the data, you just destroy the key as well. When the alternative is termite, you don't think about potentially saving data anymore, you just get rid of it

[@DanBowkley]

Instead of inductive deformation, try inductive heating. Same coil of wire, hit it with absolutely massive current until the stupid thing completely melts.

[@I8THEmagictoaster]

Put a vent hole on the other side of the thermite detonations so it will flow over the platers instead of spitting out the top.

[@jamiestobbs3945]

I'm sure the blasts could be forced to act more violently on the internal components by manufacturing new lids that are taller with more cavity space to contain everything solidly.

[@uncletacosupreme7023]

they still have booby trapping laws. and trust me they will testify that their lives were in danger.

[@CGoody564]

if the data on the drive would make you considered a "national security threat", booby trap charges are better.

[@andrewyork3869]

I am wondering if a pneumatic system that could be tripped by a motion sensor, like on a door sealed shut couldn't solve that, when they raid they go in every entry they can....

[@springbloom5940]

+Cory Goodman Act of TERRORISM. Blowing up your computer, particularly in a public place, woud probably be just as bad, in the end, as whatever they might find on it. The best solution is fast encryption, followed by fast data corruption then progressive data wipe, with the power toggle disabled so they cant turn it off. Hopefully, before they figured out what was happening and how to shut it down, enough of your data would be destroyed. Really though, security is a compromise to convenience. The better your security, the more difficult your own access. If you keep everything but the file youre working on encrypted, youre reasonably safe, but that makes doing anything a task. Of course, thats really no more time consuming or complicated, than daily use of computer was 20 years ago. All about convenience.

[@morphman86]

Considering a "threat towards officer" usually lands you in jail for about 5 years, and "piracy" usually lands you in jail for 10-15 years, and piracy is what most would go for nowadays because it is so common and holds such high penalty, I say booby trap that laptop and take the shorter sentence!

[@fermitupoupon1754]

So you make sure the HDDs you use have glass platters, and put a solenoid in them to shatter the platters. The solenoid is tiny, looks like a regular part of the drive mechanism on x-ray, and if you mount it solidly it wouldn't be able to puncture the shell of the drive. Especially in a laptop situation you could just short the batteries through the solenoid, or just use a tiny mains powered solenoid in a data centre. It doesn't need to have a lot of force just drive a wedge into the edge of the platters. No need for explosives or anything dangerous. No booby trapping charges, and no recoverable data.

[@irishRocker1]

I watched his DefCon18 talk. Now this DefCon23 talk. Screw it, I'm now just gonna search Def Con Zoz and watch them all :D 2 down 2 to go

[@kght222]

18:24 they use that crap in explosive welding/brazing, on smaller things. old school ammonium nitrate is what is used for big shit like like welding composite armor plate together.

[@MsHojat]

That thermite slurry looked like a metallic thermal paste that one could use to conduct heat from a chip to a heatsink. I wonder how it would fare.

[@DieselRamcharger]

Total waste of time, but terribly entertaining!. An inductive blanket used in the welding industry is all thats needed. You can size them to wrap around whatever server rack you want. Max amps setting just let the machine idle. Trigger it through your security rig and there you go. One pile of molten goo in seconds.

[@andrewyork3869]

I was thinking along the same lines, going around the entire rack sounds a bit excessive. I thing that would be more of a lay out matter though.

[@TheSethcoleman]

Where do you purchase (or power) an induction blanket that can reach those kinds of temps? Typically they stop at 400f...

[@nonamefound68]

If you are really serious you use powerful electromagnets to degause the platter and if you have time run the gutman protocol on it

[@mjouwbuis]

@@TheSethcoleman I suspect its more about the number of joules delivered than about the number of farenheits.

[@TheSethcoleman]

@@mjouwbuis in resistive or inductive heating there going to be a correlation. Regardless of the unit of measure what the comment is proposing isn't possible.

[@xXMegaUltraNinjaXx]

20mm APHE cannon shell get rekt HDD.

[@coooooooooool1000]

in 1U?

[@redpark2845]

coooooooooool1000 what does 1u mean

[@tizoro3]

RedPark Don't ask questions when you're on the internet. It makes you look really really stupid.

[@redpark2845]

tizoro3 I thought the objective of a question was to get an answer. Is any question stupid when you don't know the answer and want to further your knowledge. To me advancing your knowledge is a very wise choice. Asking a question so that I could further my knowledge was a smart thing to do, because I now have more knowledge. Knowledge is power in this world of technology and information. So ask your self, is making your self more powerful stupid?

[@jimenezdecosta8478]

He means he is from the toxic part of the internet, expressing their negative emotions to strangers until they kill themselves. You can follow him down all comments being toxic, that's how you identify the most depressed ones.

[@00011theman]

I love this guy, his talks are always great. Can't believe I missed him at DEFCON last year :(

[@jasonscott3712]

From what I hear, jet fuel can melt "anything".

[@BytesAndCoffee]

+ajloveslily what about real dreams?

[@TheKazzarry]

+yazdmich My poor beans?

[@michaelmcneil4168]

Only Port Authority skyscrapers.

[@tacdaddy4119]

From what I hear ,you heard wrong.

[@Djerun88]

it can even pulverize steel i heard.

[@kikamonju]

4:58 RIP my ears Sincerely, A headphone user

[@michaelharris679]

You'd think you could use the oxygen to deliver a fine thermite powder like in air jet cutting. Inductive (heating) methods are still probably the best idea.

[@railgap]

I'm imagining some niche products here, possibly involving powder activated captive bolt mechanism to penetrate (with alacrity, heh) the platters right through the casing.

[@wesrurede]

For the platters, Aqua Regia acid, then drop the platinum for money towards the next drive. Recycle the aluminum case.

[@chopinbloc]

17:05 What if you added an oxydizer (like KNO3) to the slurry so you had two reactions going at the same time? Something to help the wet portion be consumed as well?

[@firestorm734]

Orientation will play a big role in the efficacy of a thermite drive destruction method.

[@GregoryKyriazis]

"Hey Siri! Self-destruct NOW!"

[@Stoney3K]

Are there even commercial systems that facilitate data self-destruction, for example in organisations that work with data that highly sensitive to theft or espionage?

[@fss1704]

hot naoh can destroy an aluminium drive pretty easily... especially if someone waits too long to clean it, more than one minute and the data's gone.

[@fss1704]

the aluminium case will react with naoh making it even hotter and more reactive.

[@wichitawwojak3786]

But will it destroy it in sixty seconds?

[@mduckernz]

@@wichitawwojak3786 If you kept it permanently molten, probably, but that's a lot of energy use

[@cosmicraysshotsintothelight]

No. The drive 'dies'. ALL of 'the data' is not. Some will remain. Any platter surface not destroyed can be read. It does not require reading all of it.

[@PointyGorman]

The termite didn't heat the drive past its curie temperature? I would have thought if part of it melted the rest would have taken some serious heat.

[@tizoro3]

nori Learn how things work then you'll understand.

[@craig3.0]

You should probably actually try learning how things work instead of just saying that to people who have. I have a lot of experience melting down hard drives and casting parts with the aluminum, and let me tell you, you're completely underestimating the thermal conductivity/heat capacity of aluminum. If you want to melt even the very edge of one of those hard drive cases, you have to get the entire thing up to right below that temperature. No matter how much heat you put into it, the rest of the case will just sink all that heat away from that edge and the hard drive will end up heating up very uniformly.

[@ffrrreeeakk]

Couldn't you kill a platter by overclocking the drive to a ridiculous voltage. Press a button and suddenly platters spin up to 20x their highest rated speed? I had a drive basically destroy itself once through a wiring fault.

[@retsaoter]

You have to physically destroy the drive platters to prevent forensic recovery. Sure the drive would be broken but the information would still be there.

[@insu_na]

Have you ever seen glass discs spin at ridiculous speeds? Glass disintegrates relatively spectacularly when spun fast enough.

[@TJackson736]

@@insu_na Glass disks can be takens care of easily. The reason Al dicks are used is because they are cheaper, more common, and harder to destroy.

[@banza1]

those oil well perforators could work like in a 3u server where the drives are placed on thier sides so it would hit threw meny with one shot

[@waitwut2921]

11:06 damn thats some dangerous thermal paste

[@Aaron-zu3xn]

he should've just added ammonium nitrate to the naptha version and detonated it

[@FoodPvP]

Kids in Africa could have eaten those hard drives.

[@Baiswith]

I like the idea that with the damped explosion with the sandbag on top, the sandbag splitting contributes to automatic fire suppression xD

[@AflacMan13]

How to do Automatic Emergency Drive Destruction? Mount a separate heavy output high capacity backup power supply to the area the hard drives are stored in. Mount the drives in their own dedicated cabinet. Mount a large high gauss electromagnet on at least one side of the cabinet. Mount the cabinet over a large metal shredder with an hydraulic follwer plate to push it down into the shredder to keep it from popping out and surviving the shredding. Have the shredder dump it's contents after shredding into a blast furnace. Blast furnace should be fitted with an actual solid rocket fuel rocket engine, firing into a partially enclosed burn chamber, at no less than 5000 degrees. Have the rocket blast burn the contents and vent the gasses, fire, and fried hard drive particles out a long tube to blast the bits into an ash cloud that floats away in the breeze.

[@Attewir]

I was hoping to see data-recovery attempts on all of those drives

[@DonkenAndToivolaRR]

A clay flowerpot with 4 holes in the bottom and a sand dam around the bottom of the pot to prevent uncontrolled distribution, 2 pounds of thermite and the hot iron will burn its way down through the harddrive, transforming it into a desktop ornament with lots of iron between the platters. The iron needs to be as hot as possible, need to have some thermal capacity (hence the amount, to not cool down too quickly) and need to be guided to small places to burn through. It won't work with a small amount on a big surface.

[@jimmygravitt1048]

This crowd would be in awe of the Army's shaped charges and even more the cratering charges.

[@Der_Ebi]

Heating magnets above the Curie temperature deletes the magnetization. Why did he only look on the shiny surface but not on the magnetization storing the data?

[@spencerreppe7558]

I know right

[@laylarodriquez6706]

A loud enough sound at the right frequency can destroy the platters. This is a risk when inert gas fire protection systems deploy because of the loud whistling sound they can make as they release pressure.

[@i93sme]

That is amazing BS. I can tell you that even an accidental explosive dispersion of gas through a fire protection system did nothing to live equipment. If you don’t correctly secure your racks in place you can tilt them and lock drives, yes. But not destroy platters ‘due to sound’.

[@semibreve]

I think the problem with the thermite is that containing it turns it into an explosive, instead of giving it the opportunity to pool in place while the thermite heats up/burns through the drive

[@LaskyLabs]

They should send these to drive savers and see if they can recover data from them.

[@teh_major4106]

14:30 if the drive was better sealed to prevent the gases and molten metal escaping out the top cover, or better yet given a route out of the hdd case via the opposite side of the platter, it would force the gas/metal past or through the platter.

[@Arsagon26]

I really hope they use that for Mr Robot

[@riftalope]

Using thermate with the close open space available inside I'd make 2 copper plated shaped charges to cut through the plates and scatter the bits.

[@GermanAnimeStriker]

Back in the day my boss just drilled like 3 holes in it with a normal work drill... Well the explosions look like more fun to me :D

[@kfftfuftur]

Just encrypt your drives and have a button to cut power to all servers holding the key in RAM

[@matthewallison7604]

Empty out your old HDD case, install your ssd in the case and pack around with thermite :0

[@Jeranhound]

I don't know how feasible it is, but it seems like most of his methods would work better if he simply replaced the lid of the aluminium enclosure with a plastic one. Much less of a heat sink between the explosives/thermite and the platters.

[@evknucklehead]

The rest of the cases are typically aluminum too, meaning you're still wasting a bunch of your energy heating up the case instead of the platters.

[@markpenrice6253]

@@evknucklehead ... 3D print a whole new case and transplant the guts? Given that if you're going to consider packing the drive internals with thermite you're probably going to be working in a clean room and/or accepting the risk of a dust-induced head crash anyway... Heck, you could even maybe just mould a case from thermite itself, or mix it into the 3D printing filament if you're brave enough to risk it in the printer.

[@evknucklehead]

@@markpenrice6253 While most thermite variants probably would not ignite in a 3D Printer due to the relatively low temperatures involved, you run into other potential problems with the printed object, as having the wrong blend of thermite components to filament components would affect the ability to ignite the blend, and the thermite components themselves will likely affect the adhesion of the filament to itself, making the printed object fall apart too easily to be used for the mechanical stresses in a typical hard drive. Another thing to consider is that thermite itself is not a material, it's a blend of materials consisting of a fuel (usually aluminum due to its relatively low cost balanced with its high reactivity) and an oxide (Iron Oxide variants are most common, but not the only oxide used depending on what the goal of the thermite reaction is). By its nature, thermite works best as a powder, and really can't be combined into a solid object without some kind of binding agent. Then again, there are some versions of thermite that include a binding agent as part of their composition, such as the Magnesium/Teflon/Viton blend commonly used in decoy flares (the kind used to confuse IR-guided ["heat-seeking"] missiles) since the 1950's. While still not a perfect solution, due to Teflon and Viton's elasticity, it's probably more viable than some of the other options out there.

[@jryanburnette]

It needs a six foot metal enclosure with two feet of space inside and holes for the wires and such that can contain the blast.

[@CellVendettahehe]

What I'm getting from this is that det cord and shaving cream is underrated.

[@MrCarrot14]

What about submerging the device into liquid nitrogen and then smashing it to bits with a blunt object?

[@AnD1262]

+MrCarrot14 the point is that the drive has to be in the computer (he says server but same difference) and that the process would be linked to a panic button or a intruder alarm and that the rest of the computer is useable/fixable or at least the damage contained inside the computer

[@Crushonius]

that doesnt work with aluminum

[@daydodog]

Yes, that sounds super practical for your 10000 drive datacentre

[@BartJBols]

Put a thick metal door on the only access point to your datacenter and put radiation symbols on it combined with a radiation suit stand next to it and a fake geiger counter going mad. By the time the goonsquad figures it out for a bluff and sends in a robot to be sure you will have had plenty of time to trigger a deadmans switch through software that cleans the drives.

[@j9260]

Bart Bols the reason they are physically destroying the drives in because there is always a way to recover data, as long as the physical form exists

[@BartJBols]

Jesus Christ a deadmans switch can very well be something that physically destroys the drives. there are plenty of examples how to do this on a certain pirate youtube channel.

[@halfofakebab1659]

Software that cleans the drive? Meaning you want to just zero out the drives? That would take much longer to do than it would for anyone to figure out that it's a bluff.

[@cosmicraysshotsintothelight]

Hard drives RECORD data. "File deletion" utilities do not destroy deleted files, and 'wipe' utilities do not 'cap it all off' either. Originally written data can be recovered if the drive platters are available and still flat, PERIOD.

[@userPrehistoricman]

If you have 10GB drives then you could overwrite the entire disk with trash in 1 minute. I understand that writing all zeros to the drive can leave small differences in each magnetic bit that an analogue reader could bring back some of the original data. However, I think it could be possible to install hacked firmware such that it would write random analogue data and no guesses could be made as to the original data.

[@Carter-dv4hz]

Put drives in hydraulic press. Press press. Drives broken.

[@josephbolton5103]

Awesome presentation and preservation of eyes and limbs

[@ofyourbluesky]

I love how you can hear the happiness in the laughter. Aww.

[@GeeDeeONE]

KABOOOOOM... "Dude... that is not what i meant by "Defrag"!!!!!" :-D

[@tim8190]

some ideas spot welding heat it up with electric energy till it welds

[@Jon6429]

You guys always bring me the very best violence :)

[@jimmygravitt1048]

Fun fact, the amount of acceleration experienced by the back end of a shaped charge at the instance of detonation is so great, that if it continued, you would accelerate to the speed of light in less than a second. (Obviously, this acceleration is GREATLY reduced, so it never comes close to the speed of light.)

[@muha0644]

you could just get a huge bucket, fill in with thermate, bury the drives there (with the cables in) and when things go south you melt them all at once

[@justsammy2023]

Time for my yearly re-watch

[@Aerroon]

Just use a hydraulic press.

[@lukkan99]

from finland

[@CGoody564]

good luck installing a press in a hard drive rack...

[@MachineWashableKatie]

like, a really big one.

[@thepope3092]

that's what she said.

[@powdemonic7121]

when in doubt.... C4

[@MichaelMantion]

Nothing is more destructive than a new puppy.

[@BarneyCraggs]

More than happy to add the 1,000th like. Great presentation

[@Throneos]

release abrasive powder into the running drive

[@the_socompsp]

why dont you just build custom drives that have heads that double as lathes?

[@StephenOwen]

Use the thermite with a plug of iron to create your own mini explosively formed penetrator to shatter the disk! Or, place your thermate charges on top of the disk, or drill out some of the center of the spindle to place some inside?

[@jimmygravitt1048]

The way you primed those second, smaller oil well perforators is going to fuck up the formation of those jets, making them much less effective.

[@StevenLandesVO]

One wonders if you could just inject a highly abrasive powder in to the drive while it was spinning and just scratch it up enough to make it unreadable.

[@chrisw1462]

Thermite-activated Faraday Cage - coat the walls with copper!

[@kurtmayer2041]

they should watch the (now 7 years old) defcon talk "And That's How I Lost My Other Eye...Explorations in Data Destruction"

[@randomknight2585]

He could have use flux to increase the burn time or he could use tungsten trioxide or boron trioxide, the tungsten produces the hottest thermite reaction and the boron is the most energetic and the most explosive

[@sienile]

For the flash drives a high amp draw through a coil around the drive would burn it beyond usability. Plus, no explosions that could possibly result in accidental homicide.

[@CGoody564]

he's not trying to destroy flash drives. he's trying to destroy SDD's. he's using flash drives to represent SDD's, which isn't very conclusive.

[@MartinRys]

Both are NAND flash, same thing.

[@kght222]

17:00 to accomplish your thermal goal you just need a slow burn at pretty high temperature. i get your 60 second goal, but once the fire has started nobody is going to be picking up the hard drive until it isn't burning, i think you could probably come up with something that burns for two minutes at 2000c that would fit inside the drive. and as you stated the drive is a big old heatsink, 2 minutes at 2000 should bring everything inside over 1000. so a slower burn should be the goal. blowing the drive up won't make it unrecoverable.

[@OspreyKnight]

I'd probably go with a .50AE with a tungsten bullet. Easy to make a gun that can be mounted on the drive and it will go through your hardrives. By gun I mean drill a half inch hole in a steel block, make a spring loaded mechanism that throws the shell back against a firing pin. Guns are easy when they don't need to shoot more then once or be accurate.

[@compwiz00]

The trick is the make thermite from ground up drives!

[@fss1704]

phosphoric acid inside a hard drive, what an emotion of seeing glass-eating acid inside a polyethilene coated drive.... or teflon maybe...

[@TheKaos90]

Well if anyone is so desperate about destroying data, have the hdd's stacked in a separate chamber and do'em all with one oil well perforator

[@chadpunte1731]

Any liquid that hardens stronger than aluminum that also isn't removable by a solvent that doesn't react with aluminum would work. Nothing comes to mind except perhaps some sort of impregnated cement.

[@TobiasHagen7]

Why not remove the lid of the drive before dumping thermite onto it? Or even better, use glass disks.