Chinese SSD offers mission impossible style self destruction (opens in new tab)

I'm really surprised that they implement "destroy all data" by physically overwriting the flash cells. This is commonly (e.g. iPhone) done by storing all data encrypted with a randomly-chosen key and just throwing away the key to "delete" it, which is a much faster way to destroy a drive. And it's not like Flash drives can function without a somewhat complicated controller anyway...

EDIT: clarified in response to DanBlake (and hackermom, who has just been hellbanned.)

I just wasted 5 minutes trying to find a link to post here. It was an article where two hackers decided to actually try out all the various hard disk destruction methods people postulate, with a view to making a remote self-destruct mechanism. They posted lots of photos of different things they tried, and an amusing write up of their escapades: they burned them with fire, attacked them with acid, masonry drills, other chemicals, almost maiming themselves and annihilating their garage a couple of times. If anyone could dregde up the URL for me I'd be most appreciative.

I am wondering what the use case for this is.

I mean you want to destroy your computing equipment for 2 reasons.

1) Its end of life cycle. In this situation you have plenty of time to do what you want.

2) The enemy is upon you. In this situation you are very short on time.

For situation 2 I would have thought burning or blowing up the computers would be a better solution than trying to quickly unscrew the case. Find the cable. Find the hole to plug the cable in. Press the button. Move onto next hard drive / system.

For situation 1 I would have thought that destroying them another way would be just as effective. You would also have the advantage of not having self destructing hard drives in key systems which could malfunction / be exploited / triggered because someone pressed the red button to erase by mistake.

The only use case I can think of is hackers / pirates / terrorists. I could see them running a computer which has the red button ready to go and taped to the outside of the case to destroy evidence as soon as police try to kick down your front door.

Why do I need the red button if the green button erases data sufficiently?

The red button is impressive but whats the benefit of trashing the SSD? Or does the green button not erase data with 100% reliability?

What's the point of the green button (overwriting data with random garbage), if you can have an encrypted drive, which means you have random garbage on it all the time, lest you have the key. Well, maybe that's how it works (erasing the encryption key), though in this case there is no point of doing it remotely.

In this case the red button is not that important either. The only thing they could be used is when you are tortured to give away the decryption key (or passphrase) for the drive. By pressing the red button, you could convince the bad guys, that they won't be able to read the data anyway. The green button would not save your arse, since they may just think that you gave them the wrong key.

Does this have an internal battery to ensure that the destruction is complete even if the power source is removed? Otherwise there's an obvious weakness: before raiding the house, cut the power: this will prevent the SSD user from being able to destroy their data.

Smoke and close up damage seem fake.

Hmmm, so you're using your hard drives in production and suddenly you add another point on the list of "possible bad things that can happen".

What if this gets triggered when you don't want it to? You're just adding another list of possible bad shit that can happen.

I rather wished it was not built into the device itself, but you connect it to something else.

Just add another layer of stuff that can go wrong, and this one fries the disk completely.

Being a Chinese solution I sort of wished they just attached some fireworks. :(

I guess these buttons have to be installed in some way that they are easily and quickly pressed in case of emergency before the enemy gets the equipment (so w/o opening your notebook i.e.). But then every colleague running past my desk can quickly trash my SSD. Probably a remote triggering the buttons via software makes more sense.

I think triggering an overwrite of all memory with random data by pressing a short sequence of on-unit buttons would be more practical when you're smuggling data through Jinnah international airport and the authorities seize you.

This movie clip feels like it could be featured in a dystopian sci-fi movie in which a big corporation has all the power. Just waiting for Deckard to walk by a billboard and see this playing.

"We have a batch of spontaneously self-destructing drives, now what?" "It's A Feature!" ;)

No, seriously, this may be pretty useful, especially since the self-destruct mechanism can be hooked up to something else.

Wow! I'd have to buy a stack of these so I can demo it to my friends every now and then.