Hard Drive Destroying Incendiary

[Ctrl_C]

i know this has been discussed before, but not seriously enough. basically i want to create a system that torches my hard drives when a key sequence is punched in on a wireless transmitter. I can purchase a <a href="http://www.parallaxinc.com/html_files/products/Basic_Stamps/module_bs2e.asp" target="_blank">BASIC Stamp 2e</a> that will hold 4000 lines of code for $54. I would also need a <a href="http://www.parallaxinc.com/html_files/products/BS_Boards/carrier_boards_brief.asp" target="_blank">carrier board</a> to hold the chip and add electronics too. add $20. the same company, <a href="http://www.parallaxinc.com" target="_blank">Parallax</a>, sells a <a href="http://www.parallaxinc.com/html_files/products/RF_Mods/28004-28005.asp" target="_blank">5 button keychain transmitter and reciever board</a> add $20 and $69 respectively. now, wire it all up, program it to receive a 10 digit key sequence, emit a voltage on an output channel to a relay hooked up to a nichrome ignitor to ignite/detonate something. anyone have any thoughts about this? what about safeguards? it has to be able to preform when the heat is on but perfectly harmless and reliable otherwise. and the most important question of all, what type of incendiary? a model rocket engine would be simple and almost guaranteed to preform, however, may not do the job. Thermite is a good choice but may end up setting the house on fire...not good. let me hear some ideas.

[ January 13, 2002: Message edited by: Ctrl_C ]</p>

[PYRO500]

Well, If your going to put an incindieary on you HDD then you might as well count on your entire computer being destroyed anyways, all you'd need to do is put a little thermite near the edge of the disk then it'd burn through and the 7200 RPM spinning disk should take care of the rest. it is pretty much a dead HDD when the case gets opened let alone thermite on it, you'd need sometrhing like Mg powder to get it going and they can still recover fragemnts of data even when your hard drive is a 3 in. cube.

[Energy84]

What about KNO3 + Sugar? It burns hot and should be easy enough to ignite with nichrome wire. I don't know how good it keeps over long periods of time or if the smoke is acceptable. A model rocket motor might not work to well because you'd have to hold it down with something (it's a rocket afterall) and it might be kinda hard to setup inside a computer case too. I've also been told by a company rep. (Estes) that the motors should be kept inside their packages until they're ready to be used. I found that out the hard way when the propellant shot out of it's casing and destroyed one of my rockets :eek:
I just thought of it, you might need standoffs too (5mm or so should be enough) because some drives can get pretty hot. Also, make sure that the incendiary is on the steel housing side (not the electronics side) so that when it burns through, it might still have a chance that the platters would be spinning.
Also, could a strong electomagnet be placed next to it to be turned on by the relay? this could further destroy data and diminish the chances of any data recovery from those little chunks of leftover disk. :D

[ January 13, 2002: Message edited by: Energy84 ]</p>

[nbk2000]

Is it external or internal?

External would be the simplist to set up, and allow for overkill sized devices.

Internal (in the drive itself) has the advantage of being undetectable to even a close examination.

Externally, there's no reason you even need to have the drive in the computer. You just get a 40" long IDE cable, a power extension, and set the thing at the bottom of a flower pot. Over which is suspended a larger pot full of thermite. Thermite goes off, dumps several pounds of molten iron onto hard drive....piggies are left trying to recover data from a blob of slag. :D Good Luck!

A plaster/metal powder torch would do the same.

Then there's the internal SD. This one is a good idea as a back up to the main self-destruct. Since it's internal in the drive, no visual examination would detect it. Which would be a good thing if they catch you unawares before you can activate the main SD.

A hydralically compressed mix of PTFE and Mg/Al is inert, dust free, and burns with a 5,000 degree flame to vaporize and melt the disks, with highly abrasive particles to grind the platter, and corrosive flouride fumes to etch the magnetic coating to a pitted moonscape.

You'd have to open the drive to do this mod, which voids the warranty. Also, you'll have to come up with a clever way for it to activate if attached to a normal computer.

Reversing the power supply polarity to the drive, using a diode to act as a switch to initiate an e-match if hooked up to a regular power supply is one option. Others will present themselves to the clever tinkerer.

Whatever you put inside the drive will have to be vibration resistant, dust-free (even micron sized particles), vapor free, heat resistant, and basically inert till activated. Any outgassing of vapor or particles could cause the drive to crash.

And I've disassembled drives in a clear poly bag and re-installed them. They still worked. All the tools are placed in the bag along with the drive, having used a virgin bag that isn't opened more than needed to slip in the parts.

Inflate with a dust filtered air source.

A glove box would be better and can be made fairly cheaply.

Start with a $20 500MB junker drive first before risking that $200 80GB drive.

[BoB-]

I remember a topic a year ago or so, and a member had the idea of wrapping the entire hardrive in several even coils of magnet wire, the E-magnet was powered by an UPS unit.

Also, have you considered using a pager? That one phone call in jail would be pretty handy :D

I was thinking about something, do po-po have enough sense to take the computer shell off looking for hidden drugs/papers? I can see them doing this.

[nbk2000]

It's SOP for the POO-POO (AKA Brown Stuff in Blue ;) ) to thouroughly examine a computer for boobytrap devices before taking it apart to take the hard drive back to the lab.

Pagers are now watch sized. It shouldn't be too hard to get one inside a drive. But making sure that only a certain entered code number could set it off may be. Can't count the number of "wrong numbers" on my pager.

I just checked out those R/C modules you listed. They have a rather pitiful 75 foot max range. What if you're out watering the lawn when piggies roll up? You might be out of range.

Also, how to prevent accidental ignition? Since it has 5 buttons, each on of which can activate something, perhaps you can have it set so that each button has to be pressed in a particular order, each one engaging a relay that controls the flow of current to the destruct. Only when all 5 have been pressed in order will the device than activate.

Pressing a button out of sequence disengages all previously activated relays and resets it to a safe mode.

with 5 buttons, it's a 1/120 chance of randomly poking the buttons being able to activate the device. Especially since any errors resets it to safe mode.

Besides which, why bother? Things haven't gone downhill enough to require a SD HDD because of bookz. Now if this was PEDO-NET (kiddie porn) THEN you'd have reason for it.

But it never hurts to have the tricks ready, eh? ;)

[ January 14, 2002: Message edited by: nbk2000 ]</p>

[mrloud]

I would also keep a backup copy of everything on the HDD. Encrypt it all with the strongest that PGP has to offer, then give the secret key to Mega and/or the mods. You only need the public key to create the encrypted backup. Then there is no known way you or the cops can decrypt the contents of the disk.

[BoB-]

Caching the backup drive would be more foolproof, it could be protected from the elemets then buried in some remote location.

[Mr Cool]

Just a word of warning for anyone wanting to use the PTFE/Mg incendiary stuff NBK mentioned: press it remotely, and stay away from it for the first 10 minutes after you make it. After that time it's probably safe, but it has been known to spontaneously detonate in the first few minutes after being made.

[vulture]

A electromagnet is not a good idea and will not destroy data.
Why? The data contained on a harddisc are simply magnetically polarized atoms. If you would expose them to a strong electromagnetic field the polarization of the atoms will be altered, but for all atoms in the same way.
Therefore, they simply have to be able to reconstruct one bit and with some simple program code they can completely recover all data on the harddrive.

In order to destroy the data you'll have to heat it up above the temperature where the material loses it magnetic capabilities. That will alter the order in which the atoms are bonded together and will change the electron spin randomly. Which leaves 0.0000001% probability of data recovery.

[DBSP]

I read this thread about an hour ago, half an hour later on a science program thay were talking about recovering data from HDs. A norwegian company had specialized in data recovery said that they could recover allmost all data on it, it could take a day or many weaks but they most often managed to recover 90+ %. The only way to delete the data present on the disk was to
replace it.

One way to make it totally unreadable would be to grind into a powder and throw it into a lake. Tis method however isn't very god since it's time consuming and has to be done manualy. This method is only useful if you wish to destroy a HD with sensible information on it, and if you aren't in a hurry.

A nother way would be to install a program that replaces all information on the HD. And fit this program with with some kind of trigger. Someone who is god at computers and electronics should be able to fix the trigger.

[Ctrl_C]

you guys had the same idea I did as I was sitting in my bed thinking about this. a pager. buy one and clone it from another one that is activated. this way I don't have to pay $5 a month for something that i will probably (but just maybe) never use. then hook up the LCD output to an input channel on the stamp board, and program it to output the voltage when a 10 digit number from the pager is matched to a 10 digit number stored in EEPROM. the chances that the pagers clone gets that same 10 digit number is slim to none.

as it stands now, it would be an internal drive. i like to keep things neat without ribbon cables streaming from the case. I wouldn't want to put anything inside the drive itself because, A: i dont think there is room and B: I opened a drive once for a second, and it never worked since. So I'm thinking some kind of simple incediary like thermite or KNO3+sugar in a metal tube with one end capped and the other facing the drive. KNO3+sugar would be easy to ignite and would keep well i think. standoffs would be a must. I would like thermite but can't think of an easy way to ignite it.

I could disguise everything by packing in all into a fake drive case that sits next to the other two. this could evade detection unless they xray it, which i doubt. if they do though, encasing the inside in thin lead wouldn't be too tough.

also, not to worry about the data being lost. several members have complete copies of the FTP on cd and more deals are in the works to get more copies out. its a 7cd set...lotsa data but its not to be worried about. copies of this info will eventually be sent to all parts of the world, building a global network of information exchange.

and about the outlandish claims of data recovery: the only way to destroy the data is to overwrite it OR destroy the media on which it was stored. I don't think they would claim 90% recovery on a drive that had a 1/2 lb of thermite do its work on it.

[nbk2000]

There's an interesting phenomenom called "field saturation" (I believe) that means that magnetic media that has held a constant field state (1 or 0) for a long time, will retain this charge, even after being written over many times with another charge.

It gets into deep physics that I don't remember. But THEY can, if willing to invest the effort, use tunneling electron scanning microscopes to read this "phantom" charge and reconstruct data that has been overwritten more than a dozen times.

It's incredibly tedious and expensive, but they don't foot the bills, it's the taxpayers. So if you're important enough, they WILL be able to get ANYTHING you've stored on a drive if it's still intact.

Hence, the only SURE way to destroy data beyond recovery is to physically destroy the media it's on to slag, sludge, or ash.

I've never heard of teflon/Mg igniting under pressure, but I suppose it's possible. Compression does cause heating, and if the magnesium isn't passivated, it could get hot enough to ignite.

But detonate? I doubt that. More likely a very rapid combustion like black powder that ruptures its container.

[kingspaz]

<a href="http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/" target="_blank">http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/</a>
useful program. recover my files now! :)

[Mick]

a few years back the NSW police force sold all of there old computers. Only they forgot to reformat the hard drives before they sold them at auction.
so people ended up getting computers with classified infomation like car number plates, and criminal records and the like.

so after that PR disarster, they now low level format the drives, then write all 1's to the drive, then LL format, then all 0's, format, then all 1's and then format again.
and according to them, there is about a .00001% chance you could ever get anything of use off the drive.

now, one thing everyone has forgotten is RAM.
it will contain shadows of applications, and text etc etc (this is due to windows extreme RAM handling abilities..or lack there of)
so you would also need to destroy that as well.

also note, those programs say they can delete all your old files and flush your RAM with out a trace actually don't work for shit. file traces can still be found on your HDD and in your RAM. so do not rely on them to save your ass.

so far, the best thing i can think of is thermite in a container(something thats the same size or bigger then the disc, to make sure you get it all) sitting above your HD attached to a pager detonator. its almost guaranteed to work

you shouldn't have to worry about stand offs either because most normal IDE HD's will put out a maximum of about 80 degrees celcius.
however most should operate at 40-60 DC.

if your using a SCSI drive(which i don't think anyone here does) i wouldn't hurt to use stand offs. as i have had a couple of SCSI drives commit weird acts of the hari-kari, and literally burn up.

but also, something that noone has mentioned is how are you going to stop your house from burning down if you ignite the thermite?

cause you'd be feeling pretty stupid if you were arrested by the cops, and they didn't tell you what for, so you figure that it had something to do with your computer. So you ring your computer and nuke the HDD with thermite, which then sets your computer on fire which sets the curtains or something on fire, and your house burns down.
and the cops come out and say "shit sorry, we arrested the wrong person...hey don't you live at *insert address*?...just heard over the radio that its on fire"

[Anthony]

The steel computer case should keep the fire contained but you might want to stand it on a sheet of fire proof material such as asbestos and keep the computer case with a large gap all around between it and surrounding objects. Hell you could line the entire case with asbestos, might mess with your heat dissapating properties if you're a ph33rsome 0vacl0x0r though :)

I think stand offs on HDD's are a good idea, as although in normal operation they don't get hot enough to ignite the incendry composition, with the insulation of the incendry charge it would probably over heat. Especially since the "do not cover" breather hole is on the side you want to place the charge (non elctronics side). Even if the drive didn't get hot enough to pose a risk of igniting the incendry, it would shortern the life of the drive.

With a HDD incendry charge going off inside your case it's going to pretty much ruin everything else as well. So you might as well charge RAM, video/graphics card etc and make sure you get it all.

"according to them, there is about a .00001% chance you could ever get anything of use off the drive"

Is that for the average person or with the entire resources of a federal government?

[nbk2000]

NSW=New South Wales? Not exactly noted computer technology experts. Now if it was IBM/Lawerence Livermore/MIT/Cal-Tech saying it, then I might believe it.

And anthony is quite correct in that what is an utter impossibility for an individual/small group is trivially easy to a superpower.

Wiping utililites will complicate the job for the computer poo-poo, but if it's beyond him, he can send it up the chain of command till it gets to whoever can do it, if it's important enough.

It all breaks down to the cost/benefit ratio to them. If you were OBL, then they'd spend billions to read your hard drive after it'd been atomized to dust. Local crackhead reformats his drive? Into the trash can.

RTPB: Plan for Failure.

Plan on the primary SD not working/fire spreading beyond computer/getting raided before you can push the button/etc.

This means you need secondary SD mech (internal)/dual initiators/alternate means of activating (resetting timer?)/insulating-isolating the computer so if it's destroyed the house won't burn down/others.

Think of everything that can go wrong, then prepare for it. Then you just have to worry about the things you DIDN'T think of. :D

[BoB-]

"/getting raided before you can push the button/etc"

I just had a belly laugh thinking about the evidence locker burning to the ground.

[ January 15, 2002: Message edited by: BoB- ]</p>

[nbk2000]

I suppose if one wanted to be a real asshole, they could have 2 HDDs. One is the real one, the other has had all the guts removed, to be replaced with an ultrasonic/thermal vaporizer to dispense the mustard gas/DFP/sarin that is contained within.

It sits inertly in the computer, since the power cable that is attached to it is invisibly altered so no current actually goes through it.

But when the piggies plug in the toxic drive to their computer, current IS going to it, which initiates the device, vaporizing the toxins and wiping out the computer forensics techs and anyone else around.

:D

Would you rather be the pyro sitting in prison for life for thought crime? Or the pyro sitting on death row for wiping out 6 cops?

I'd rather be the dead man walking. You ever tasted prison food? 40 years of that is HELL! Kill me quick, please!

[vulture]

RAM doesn't contains any data anymore after 30s of power (3.3v) downtime.
It's useless to destroy that, besides, it's wiped everytime you start up the computer or reset it.
Only windows (never use windows for criminal activities) keeps info on programs that you have closed in the RAM, but that's wiped also as soon as the windows session is closed.

To everyone who intends to use his computer for "non conventional activities" use linux or Beos, they don't leak megabytes of information/ hour to third parties or government agencies.
They also don't keep a history of programs/files/documents.

[twinkle]

killing a harddisk is still done the best with electric energy heat will kill the drive work and the motor part but the information is on magnetic base ,there are programs like wipe which over write the information several times but when it has to be done remote I would choose a high frequency current through a coil it will fry the disks(bending them to) as well as kills the data magnetic or something more simple and good working is injecting a strong acid into the drive , which will eat up the disks inside the drive.

[Arkangel]

Instead of wasting my own HDD I'd really like to find a way to fuck up the internet consoles in the railway station I've just passed through. Thought I had just enough time to check what's going on, so put my cash in. As soon as I tried to open a topic on the forum, the prudish bastard piece of shit net nanny thing told me that it contained the word "pussy" and that I wasn't allowed! I couldn't believe it, and if I had been equipped with thermite, would have left it in a smouldering heap of slag. This in a country where pussy means nothing. (I have a great "pussy shot" if anyone's interested, mail me) ! It wouldn't even give me my cash back. AAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHH!

[ImagineReality]

Ok a tube of thermite wouldn't be the right thing for the simple reason that once it eats through the first part of the hard drive the drive will stop spinning. So you would only destroy a part of it.

The ideal thing would be a block of thermite with the same area as the hard drive to make sure you would get every part of the disk. If could be set off in a few ways, either you could have a piece of magnesium ribbon pointing out the front of the case or you could set up a system with either a pager or a phone. I like the phone or pager option, so you get arrested and are in the police station, you get one phone call right? The problem there is that it might get opened before you get chance, which also brings the idea of having it boobytrapped but then you may cover a cop in molten metal and i am willing to bet the jail time would be high. You could also simply have a button on the case to press with a cover over it so it can't be pressed by accident (if you have kids this may not be a good idea). I like that one actually, lets face it, if someone kicks in your door you should be able to get to your computer and press the button before they get you right?

Well those are my thoughts on it.

[tmp]

I keep the data on an external HD. Give me a few seconds I can render the
drive unreadable with my 16 LB sledgehammer ! It isn't that HARD ! Try
reading the disk after I've smashed it !

[Jacks Complete]

tmp, that's a good idea, unless it's a 5am wake-up call. Then you are screwed.

What we need is a way to scour the surface... A bit of sandpaper on a rod, dropped onto the spinning disc would stop the whole thing from working. The difficult bit is getting it to be in place without fragging the HDD in the first place.

The more I think about it, the more I think an idea like NBKs is the best. Make a PC, add a wireless card, hide it totally inside a block of concrete. Access it via SSH. If anyone wants in to it, they will have to hammer the concrete apart. Of course, it will be well disguised, so that is not likely to happen. They seize your PC, and just find links to files, but no files. They could search all they liked, as long as they did it from the cop shop... and a shitload of Thermite in a block of concrete would frag everything, safely, if it were tampered with.

[tmp]

Even though I'm usually getting ready for work at 5 AM it really doesn't
matter. They could just come in when I'm not there. Encryption may be the
best idea, although I'm sure that the superfast computers at NSA could figure
it out given the time and money.

[fiend7267]

Well, although I really like the thermite idea, there are other equally destructive (if not even more destructive) alternatives that would be more reliable; such as a kilo of C-4 above and below the disks and wired with the pager idea. also if you got caught in the middle o' the night or while you are away, you could have a trip wire connected to your door, so when the piggies bust in...:D

[nbk2000]

Given the very dense storage capacities of modern HDD media, physical destruction by smashing isn't much more than a delaying tactic. Figure that, at 100MB+/sq cm., how big a piece would it take for a single incriminating sentence to be recovered? A sliver the size of an ant's eye?

Fiend...imagine you're on your computer when the pager hooked up to a kilo of C-4 gets a page from someone who accidentially dialed your pager number instead of their connects number...BOOOM!...bye-bye fiend. :p

The idea is to destroy the data without an accidential triggering destroying YOU.

[fiend7267]

Hmmm...good point indeed. perhaps you could have a small container filled with highly concentrated H2SO4 which would spill onto the HDD when *insert trigger method* thus melting the disk and putting house fire risk to zero. :D Additionally, H2SO4 is much easier to get than thermite or C4. furthermore, due to it's comparatively slower destruction rate (although still sufficiently speedy) will allow time for the acid to evenly distribute itself across the surface of the disk, ensuring total destruction, assuming that your computer is level.

[kikman]

Short of the scenario where the police call in a super-high ranking forensic expert, i think it would be sufficient to have an OS run from a bootable device that simply writes 1's to the entire hdd and RAM, then 0's, etc. While not as fun, it would be safer than trying melt your hard disk :)

My other idea is to have the computer with sensitive information located outside against a fireproof wall, and run your peripherals through the wall, so you can set off whatever incendiaries you like and not have your house burn down :)

[cyclonite4]

Hmmm... with technology getting smaller and smaller, as it does, it tends to be a bit easier to break (not to mention the warranties get smaller and smaller, and are voided easier).

One thing I can think of it USB thumbdrives. Sure, they aren't HDDs, but there are distro's of linux and such that can run off them, and they are getting quite a bit cheaper for the 1-2GB ones. I spent stacks of money on a USB key years ago, when they were considered 'state of the art'. Not much need to worry about destroying it, as they generally destroy themselves from regular use. If you did need to destroy it, its just a small chip you have to crack into a few pieces... I don't see them recovering data from that (You could probably melt the thing with a torch if you had to).

What you do is have the normal computer with any OS you want on it, which you NEVER use for anything incriminating or related to open-mindedness. Once you want to do such activities, power off, plug in USB key (with bootable OS), power on, and there you go. A USB key is more concealable (you can take it with you when you leave, incase the po-lice arrive when your not home), and far easier to destroy. :)


EDIT: Just came up with another idea.
If you need (semi-)permanent storage, you can use CD's (duh).

Have you ever seen what happens when you stick a CD in the microwave? :D
Well, you can store your data on CDs, and when you need to destroy them, you can pop them all in the microwave. I doubt recovering data off the disk would be an easy, if achievable task. Alternatively, you could just burn the CD(in a fire).
Infact, you could have a microwave near your computer, and use it as a container to store your CDs in, and with the press of a few buttons, you can get rid of them all. Maybe even rig up a page to the microwave. At least if its accidentally triggered, you dont have to worry about yourself being deleted.

Also, using a USB drive/CD combo, you can destroy the data much more easily than an HDD, and you dont need any risks involved with using explosives or incendiaries. I don't think you could get charged for cooking a CD or crushing a USB key, unlike using explosives/incendiaries. :)

[Isotoxin]

All of these ideas using very long IDE cables or WiFi are problematic. WiFi lowers your bandwidth and I think(but am not sure) that a very long IDE cable will have problems with carrying the data(like an over long CTR cable) Thus to solve these problems an IDE cable no longer then 5 feet might be used.

This cable would be hidden under a rug or similar and go into a ceramic flowerpot next to the computer. This pot would sit on a ceramic dish and the bottom of the pot would be filled with dry sand. Then the harddrive would be on top of the sand with thermite above and below it but sand around it so thermite would never directly touch the ceramic. Then there would be some perlite/dirt and a fake plant in the pot.

This makes the thing simply look tacky instead of suspect. The only problem is that it would not be tamper proof.

If the wifi/underground device was used it seems the WiFi would have a hard time traveling. Perhaps it could use the ground as a means of transmission or a wire attached to an underground copper water pipe. In my opinion doing so much work to hide and protect the drive is silly for an IDE drive. What if it fails? I would use a RAID drive system so if one fails I dont have to dig the thing up.

[nbk2000]

A 'thin client' terminal for the user-interface, with the buried and boobytrapped computer operating as a server, with an ethernet connection so there's no wi-fi traffic to be monitored.

I could even imagine the ethernet cable serving as the destruction initiator, because there's an unused wire pair in ethernet cables, so simply installing an inline switch on that pair (N.O.) would close the destruct circuit to do the trick.

Or, you could make the wire-pair operate as an N.C. circuit that would detect when the ethernet cable has been disconnected from the modified adaptor card, automatically triggering the self-destruct when the piggies disconnect your 'computer' from the network (which is SOP). :p

[Chaosmark]

An expansion on cyclonite4's independent HD method: I read <a href=http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8903>an article</a> where the author was recording how he turned his Ipod into a mini linux OS, as well as keeping his music playable. He merely reallocated the required memory and installed linux. And who'd think to check an Ipod? Those stupid things are everywhere, and I never even thought of anything like that before I read the article. Considering how much of a tech geek I am, I'm 99% sure that the cops aren't gonna have a clue about it. Heck, their tech guys probably won't have a clue.

All you'd have to do is plug it into a computer and force a restart from the CD-ROM instead of the internal HD. Then when you're done, you just unplug it and restart on the old HD.

Disposal? However you like, though the microwave sounds best. Fry the sucker!

Advantages:
*Cheaper to get your hands on than an entire new PC, or even just mini harddrives. A quick Ebay search for MP3 players with 5gb (more than enough space since we really aren't using it as much more than a front) gives a plethora of options for ~$50
*Easier disposal than said PC.
*Easier to conceal. Everyone and his dog seems to have one nowadays, and the cops probably won't be looking for or even thinking that you'd have such a thing, though in some cases it'll be obvious (like when you're living in a cheap house, with cheap clothes, with an expensive, top-notch Ipod sitting next to you)
*More space compared to a flash drive. Most USB's that I've seen have ~500 megabytes of memory, though some have more
*Will last longer than a flash drive since it uses an actual harddrive, not flash memory.

Disadvantages:
*More expensive than the flash drive. You get what you pay for...
*Might stand out as an oddity in your purchasing records. I expect you to handle that yourself. We're not here to lead you by the hand.
*Minor discrepancies might get you caught if you're not careful. What, this Ipod is supposed to have 5gb, but only has 2? Send it down to the guys in tech and see what they can find out.

You'll have to figure out the specifics of doing it for yourself, though I'm sure that article will be a good starting point. You could have a more techy person do it for you, but then that's a witness that could give away the chirade if questioned. RTPB Cover your arse! Play it smart and you've got something hiding on you that the cops won't suspect.

Yeah, we've got orders to keep an eye out for anyone with an Ipod...

[Lewis]

I keep the data on an external HD. Give me a few seconds I can render the
drive unreadable with my 16 LB sledgehammer ! It isn't that HARD ! Try
reading the disk after I've smashed it !

Problem with that, is that hard drives for some reason are built like tanks. I remember when I was younger taking a hammer to one, and it took a while to get open.

What about strong acids? If one could facilitate a way to release even a mild one onto the disk, problem solved. It wouldn't destroy the data instantly, but the more time the authorities spent analysing the HD, the longer it would have to eat away at the contents.

[c.Tech]

What about strong acids? If one could facilitate a way to release even a mild one onto the disk, problem solved.

That has been discussed in another thread, here (http://www.roguesci.org/theforum/water-cooler/4986-emp-hard-drive-cleaner.html?highlight=acid).

Chris the great got good results using HCl.

A strong acid would easily lift the materials that a hard disc is made of, if it was aluminum it would destroy the whole disc.
Howstuffworks. (http://computer.howstuffworks.com/hard-disk2.htm)
The magnetic recording material on a cassette tape is coated onto a thin plastic strip. In a hard disk, the magnetic recording material is layered onto a high-precision aluminum or glass disk. The hard-disk platter is then polished to mirror-type smoothness.

[rayman]

Using four stacked drives, empty two of them out, with the first drive being the controller for your self-destruct device, the second drive is your thermite, with a shared data cable (used for thermite igniter) connecting the two.

The third drive is your working HDD and the fourth drive is a secondary HDD.

The Thermite will melt both drives.

Most modern motherboards will accept up to 8 hard drives so running out of space for CD drives and what have you is not a problem.

How about some grammar to go with this good idea? NBK



using 3 / 4 drives

empty two out

top drive is the controller for your device
second drive is your thermite
shared data cable ( used for thermite igniter )

third drive is working HDD
fourth drive is secondary HDD

thermite will melt both drives

most modern mother boards will except upto 8 hard drives so running out of space for cd-roms and what have you is not a problem

[nmp2]

<a href="http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/" target="_blank">http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/</a>
useful program. recover my files now! :)

I've used this myself, and it works great. An alternate source is
http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

A local shop that does drive recovery has told me, "Sorry, we just can't get anything coherent out of this", when I took then a drive I accidentally "erased".

[lemons]

Testing some of these methods sounds like a great use for the pile of ancient harddrives I've got that are too small to be useful otherwise.

I like the idea of using an external harddrive combined with good encryption. You could take it with you everywhere, and that way the piggies couldn't clone it during a "sneak and peak" when you're not at home.

[ChippedHammer]

Ive tried a small lump of thermite (think coin sized) ignited on top of a hard drive inside a computer case. It totally destroyed the drive and didn't exit the case.

Put it this way.... if the FBI are kicking down your door at 6am, whether they have your computer or not its going to be a long day :)

[Khalnath]

A strong enough electromagnetic field WILL destroy all remnants of data on a hard disk. However, you are unlikely to be able to generate a powerful enough field with improvised equipment. IIRC, the US Military standard for destroying HDs containing sensitive data calls for a magnet powerful enough to bend the platters.

One thing you must always bear in mind when dealing with computers is cooling. That's the problem with encasing one in a block of concrete. If they don't get airflow, it won't generate enough heat to set anything on fire... but it WILL generate more than enough heat to cook ICs. I had a Cyrix CPU once that got so hot it fried my sound card. Hard drives need cooling too, that's the problem that jumps out at me for the flowerpot solution. You could always go the liquid cooled route, though, and put the heat exchanger outside your concrete block/flowerpot/etc.

I would like to note, though, that if you are trying to destroy evidence that you've been playing with explosives and pyrotechnics, packing your computer case full of thermite or high explosives is probably rather counterproductive.

[sdjsdj]

Put it this way.... if the FBI are kicking down your door at 6am, whether they have your computer or not its going to be a long day :)
Fair comment :rolleyes: . . .

Detonating any amount of a high explosive in close proximity to a drive is likely to completely destroy it -

It's hard enough to recover data from a well encrypted hard drive, so I think it's fair to say that even the NSA wouldn't be able to recover a thing from sand-grain-sized fragments thereof.

[akinrog]

Instead of having a harddisk incendiary / shaped charge or any explosive / pyrotechnical mixture in or around any computer equipment (thus the pig / goat kicking your door in), or of embedding a portable hard drive into concrete / safe, I prefer installing a linux OS (preferably Debian) on a minimum 2 GB capacity USB flashdisk (which is formatted and encrypted) and using that USB flashdisk for booting up a computer system which contains high capacity harddrives (which are also Ext3 formatted and encrypted).

It's possible to even put a grub (bootloader) password so in addition to encrypted harddrives / swap partitions, you shall also use password to even to be able to boot the system. :D

With such a system, I really would like to see the forensic scientists trying to extract drive contents. :D

[Shalashaska]

Detonating any amount of a high explosive in close proximity to a drive is likely to completely destroy it -

Hmmm.

Figure that, at 100MB+/sq cm., how big a piece would it take for a single incriminating sentence to be recovered? A sliver the size of an ant's eye?

An amount of explosive that is enough to sufficiently reduce the hard drive to dust sized grains, will probably do the same to you. Personally, I would stick with incendiaries or electromagnetic fields and stray away from explosives.

[nbk2000]

Much less explosive would be needed if, instead of a single charge on the drive, you had two charges on both sides of the drive, that would be fired simultanously.

The shock from the two charges would impact each other inside the drive, shattering it quite thoroughly into dust. This configuration is known as a 'Counter-Force' charge.

[hatal]

I think a high intensity electro-magnet built-in would have a destructive effect on the hard-drive data. Just push the button and the magnetic field works its magic on the bits and bytes. It's also easy to verify and refine the details with an experiment. The materials are'nt expensive (EMF generator, a crappy old hard-drive). It wouldn't be as much fun as watching the drive burst out in flames and then melting in, but I think it would remove the evidence.

"A strong enough electromagnetic field WILL destroy all remnants of data on a hard disk. However, you are unlikely to be able to generate a powerful enough field with improvised equipment. IIRC, the US Military standard for destroying HDs containing sensitive data calls for a magnet powerful enough to bend the platters."
- A handy TV demagnitizer (with some extra power) is enough to wipe data, especially that this device would be directly attached to the hood of a single hard-drive. What the US military does is probably an industrial scale procedure, like destroying several cargo loads of electromagnetic data-carriers at one shot. Obiously they need a "pretty powerful magnet".

[Shalashaska]

Precisely simultaneous detonation would be tough though, since most people would be using a basic nichrome wire setup, and a difference of milliseconds could make all the difference.

[Khalnath]

A handy TV demagnitizer (with some extra power) is enough to wipe data, especially that this device would be directly attached to the hood of a single hard-drive.

Enough to wipe it, but maybe not enough to wipe all traces. Normal operation of the drive uses magnetic fields to erase data, but it can still be recovered sometimes. The US Military spec calls for such powerful magnets because they are paranoid and don't want there to be any chance of recovering anything. I'm thinking if you're having this conversation you're probably thinking along the same lines.

[FullMetalJacket]

Other thing to remember about magnetic field wipes - Most HDDs have aluminium casings. Faraday'd!

Personally I'd just use a shaped charge on standoffs above my RAID. Sure, if they open it up they'll see it but the trick is to have a secret switch that sets it off whent he box is opened unless you have your finger on the little part of the case.

You could build a touch-switch type arrangement so there's no surface evidence either.

[Alexires]

Also remember that to have an electro-magnet, you need to have electricity.
If the bacon cuts the power to your house, you're in a world of hurt then.


Personally I'd go with something that was a little more re-assuring.....like said shaped charge. You could always have the case filled with a fair amount of your chosen smoke composition in it and when you fry the hard drives you can have it acting as a smoke bomb as well.... Assuming that it is the pork coming.

Nothing is really fool proof. You just have to do the best you can and try and make it as hard as possible for them.

[hatal]

How about modifying the settings, a let the hdd spin out of control and into pieces? Too much evidence left? New drives got preventive mechanisms? (and ofcourse, again no big-boom :o )

[DONMAN]

I was destroying a broken HD the other day, I removed one of the stickers on the outside of the HD and to my suprise I was looking right at the platters of the HD. This was a Western Digital drive! I just removed a sticker! That was all that was protecting the platters from the out side air.

So, if someone was to find said sticker on their own HD, that would be the best place to place some incendiary device.

[ghost6303]

At last, I believe I have something to contribute that hasn't already been covered!

Several months ago I was doing some experiments on erasing old hard drives. I had a few drives that died but i needed to make sure the info was unreadable.

First i tried some rifle rounds at 50 feet. This didn't give the "completely destroyed" appearance I was looking for. The platters were only in a dozen pieces.

Thermite worked to finish those drives off but isn't very practical for a 'quick and easy' disposal so many are looking for.

But this came to me surfing the web one day- to make a simple induction coil around the drive. This would heat the drive tremendously fast, to the point of being red hot, but would not be nearly as dangerous as thermite because there would be no metal slag thrown all over the house.
http://www.ameritherm.com/PDFs/coil_design.pdf

All you need is a solid conductor, say- 1/4" copper tube, and a power source. I used a spot welder rectifier rated at 500amps (9vAC) to power it (if you need instant and total destruction you might want a mig welder on its own circuit next to your computer but that might look suspicious ;) )

I took the hard drive to be executed, and wrapped it in 1/4" cardboard before wrapping the copper tube around it. The cardboard is used as a stand off between the metal drive case. I wound the tube 12 times around the length of the HD. There is about an 1/8" space between the turns.

The first time it was fired the copper tube melted at one of the connection points. I think this was for two reasons; the jumper cable used between the rectifier and the copper pipe was making contact over only a small area, and industrial induction coils have liquid running through them to keep them cool.

Well I just happened to have a 3/8" pump and some plastic tubing handy and rigged it up to a bucket and into the ends of the copper pipe. (I build water cooled computers for people with way too much money on their hands) Also use pure distilled water and a good long length of plastic tube to avoid current running through the water and into your pump.

This time it wasn't the coil that melted, it was the hard drive. It took around 7 seconds before I saw the paint smoking off, then another 4 seconds before it was on fire, then a pop when expanding gas caused the cover to break. It lasted 25 seconds before the water in the tube boiled and split the PVC which is when I cut the power. If you just turn it on and leave it there will obviously be even more destruction.

After the drive cooled for a few hours I opened it up. And not with a screw driver either, the rapid case expansion had broken just about all of the screws. Inside, the platters looked like a stack of CDs put in an oven. They were completely deformed and blackened and all the circuit boards had been completely incinerated.

This wouldn't be very hard to do to an internal hard drive. You can gut a UPS and stick the power source in there, the one I used even ran on 120v so you can even take out the batteries and still have a visibly functioning UPS in case anyone ever looks, the only thing you would need is two large gauge cables running to your computer. :rolleyes:

Also anyone a little computer savvy knows that some UPS systems have a USB interface to monitor power levels from your PC. It would be extremely easy to rig up a little USB controled switch to activate the power source in the UPS. And once you have that working its only another little program to allow remote activation, like through an email sent to your PC from a cell phone, or any IRC connection.

Another idea, as mentioned, would be a thumb drive computer like the one here (http://www.bigbruin.com/reviews05/thumbraid_1). Thumb drives being cheaper then dirt at the moment this is actualy a good idea. Check newegg.com they have flash drives around $15 per gigabyte. A 12GB flash drive RAID array for around $100 isn't bad at all.

As long as you have a few thumb drives working as one big drive, and have that one drive PGP encrypted, without all of the drives no one can decrypt anything. Especially when you throw each drive in a different lake, or give them to different people. Even one smash of a hammer would irreversibly destroy all the electrical information stored on a flash drive.

[webuyhouses]

All you need is a solid conductor, say- 1/4" copper tube, and a power source. I used a spot welder rectifier rated at 500amps (9vAC) to power it



Could you provide more details of the power supply you used?

I was under the impression that a induction heating coil needed a high frequency, or resonant L/C tank circuit for power. Or is this what your spot welder supply is?

http://www.ameritherm.com/aboutinduction.php

[Man Down Under]

http://www.deadondemand.com/products/enhancedhdd/

A destruction technology is imbedded in the hard drive casing and can be initiated by as many as 17 remote triggers. Once deployed, the data stored on the disks is destroyed beyond forensic recovery. The process is non-toxic, non-combustible and does not cause any collateral damage to the other parts of the computer. The process is self-powered. In other words, the drive does not need to be in the computer for the system to operate.

[gaussincarnate]

Induction coils, welders, plasma cutters, some inductive heaters (stoves, etc), and anything on aircraft run off of high frequency AC. The first three run off of (I believe) 3-10kHz, the fourth one varies based on use, and the fifth runs on 460(?)Hz.

For something as small as the components of a hard drive, even higher frequency is suggested, around 30kHz. Unfortunately, very few take-out parts run at such a high frequency, but you could always just make up the circuit yourself.

If you want to have some fun with this, hook up a gigantic solenoid and beat the hard drive into a fine powder. Impractical? Yes. Fun? Yes. Surprise the hell out of the cops? Yes. An all-around good package.

[penguin6636]

How badly would a magnetron aimed at a HDD damage it? Would the metal casing of the drive shield the disks from the radiation significantly?

[rollie]

How badly would a magnetron aimed at a HDD damage it? Would the metal casing of the drive shield the disks from the radiation significantly?

A magnetron? As in from a microwave? Yes it would be shielded, otherwise you'd be fried everytime you used your microwave oven.;)

You thing the easiest solution would be a strong electromagnet.

[megalomania]

Microwave radiation would cause a current flow in the harddrive leading to damage of the electronic circuitry. Most of the microwave energy would be reflected off the metallic cover and casing leading to little penetration to the platter. To avoid damaging your magnetron you should add a microwave absorber, like a glass of water, unless you happen to be using a waveguide system with an attenuator. The flowing electric current will generate heat, which can in time build up.

I don't have any specifics about the tan deltas of metals handy, but a microwave could possibly build up a very significant amount of heat, assuming the magnetron does not give out first. If you make a simple box out of silicon carbide sharpening stones, then surround that box with ceramic plates or brick (like from a kiln), a domestic microwave could melt the hard drive. Silicon carbide is a very strong absorber of microwave energy at 2.45 GHz. There is an article in popular science about melting metal in microwaves, reprinted on many blogs that you can find on google, and there is a company that sells a premade ceramic lined silicon carbide based box for domestic microwaves (no price listed, a bad sign in my experience). I am too lazy to look up the bookmarks since I have a few hundred unsorted links in my microwave bookmark collection at the moment... Google is your friend.

Microwave furnaces are being used to melt steel in industry now. A carbide lined firebox the size of a harddrive inside a slightly modified microwave (to seal off the airflow fan inside the cavity, possibly increase cooling to the magnetron) could reach a few thousand degrees. You might need a rather high wattage microwave to actually melt or burn up a harddrive. I might be building one...

EDIT: I have mercy after all.
http://www.imp.mtu.edu/information/microwave_JAN_04.htm about making steel in microwaves
http://www.thermwave.com/ The company that sells the microwave furnace box, the ThermWave. I should get a price quote from them someday.
http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2003-09/smelting-microwave The Popular Science article about melting metals quick and dirty style (and cheap, in a hotel room microwave while on the road from stuff he bought at the corner store)
http://home.c2i.net/metaphor/mvpage.html The website that inspired the PopSci article, this site goes into a little more detail for a permanent microwave furnace on the cheap.

[Positron]

This is an amazing read concerning data recovery from hard drives and silicon memory-storage devices:

http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/sec96/full_papers/gutmann/

For all of you that think that overwriting the existing data, and/or flip-flopping the bits works...think again. Because of the advanced techniques detailed in the above link, the use of ANY software to destroy data at a minute's notice should be entirely out of the question.

The best idea that I've heard yet to destroy data on a drive is total annihilation via thermite. It's messy and illegal, but it most certainly would get the job done.

If you plan to use electromagnetism to destroy the data, you should do several TESTS and ANALYZE the results before actually putting it into practice. And please share the results with us.

Interesting Story:
I used to send hard drive platters 50-75 feet into the air or so, using a 2.5kV 5uF capacitor from an old defibrillator unit, and a 10-turn flat coil made with 12-gauge copper wire from Romex. We'd just lay the platter on the coil (which was supported by the concrete underneath it), and dump the capacitor into it via a bolt thrown across a makeshift spark gap. PINNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGG. They made a really great sound, precisely like a bell going up down with doppler shift!! The massive acceleration from every shot would physically fold the platter over, making it more aerodynamic, and increasing the mileage :D

I'd be willing to bet that the pulsed magnetic field of THAT would work to destroy the data.

It would be simple to just lay the coil directly over the operating hard drive...internal, or external. Triggering the event to dump the capacitor into the coil would be incredibly easy, requiring only the most available of consumer electronics.

Most chemical compositions are illegal, but capacitors & coils aren't. Get enough capacitors together, and I bet you could blow that platter straight through the case of your computer.

Anyhow, like anything else (aside from thermite probably :D), it must be tested.

[megalomania]

Don't induction heaters use magnetic fields? I found a website once (can't find it in my links at the moment) that showed how to build an improvised induction coil. I would think the combination of magnetic fields and heating would destroy a drive.

Those advanced forensic techniques require a lot of time and money to recover data from a wiped or damaged drive. For the most par more time and money than cops or the fedgov have depending on who you are and what you are being investigated for. Osama might get every man at every alphabet agency working on his drives, JimBob the identity thief will get a few minutes of a computer forensic techs time. Drives are not infinite storage devices where every last bit of data can be recovered. Often they can extract a percentage of the data, which is not necessarily a complete file, but bits and pieces of different files.

Of course technology improves, and you drive just has to sit on the sidelines until the "automated scanning tunneling microscopy drive reader" gets invented that can recover data at a few bits a second.

[Positron]

Good points Mega.

Induction heaters make use of large (50 to Tens of Thousands of Amps) AC currents flowing through a coil to generate a powerful magnetic field around the coil. The magnetic field flips polarity (North/South in layman's terms) every time the AC current changes direction.

What happens when you take a powerful magnet, and drop it straight down into a tube of aluminum, or copper?

Answer: The magnet falls through the tube very slowly. Why? Because the magnetic field from the magnet actually induces an electric current in the metal tube, and this current sets up its own magnetic field that "fights" the externally applied field from the magnet.

End result is that the magnet falls through it slowly, and the temperature of the metal tube goes up slightly, because of electrical resistances in the tube turning the electrical energy into thermal (heat) energy. If you were to physcally push the magnet up and down the tube very quickly; you would induction heat the tube!

Replace "little magnet" with "huge, high-frequency electromagnet", and replace "tube" with "workpiece"...and you have an induction heater :cool:

Check out this heater on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZPgw2sTmNM

The ball of solder is the workpiece in this example.

Yeah, I imagine an induction heater would take care of a HDD. As always, a complete analysis would be necessary to be absolutely sure.

[sdjsdj]

You might need a rather high wattage microwave to actually melt or burn up a harddrive. I might be building one...


Shop around, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. 1 KW microwaves are readily available, if not cheap.
In my opinion, power and tampering are more likely to be issues; you can't rule out intrusion at inconvenient hours, or the possibility of them being bright enough to cut mains power.
How big a capacitor bank/car battery stack would it take to run a kilowatt of microwave (well over its rated output, since it'll only be for one use and complete destruction is critical) for the thirty seconds it'll take to ruin a HDD platter?

[megalomania]

Ohh, 1kW will simply not do for my needs :) Megalomania's Microwave Melter will be a 6kW machine using multiple magnetrons, and multiple magnetron electronics. This might end up as Special Project #2

[Charles Owlen Picket]

Government's have various data protection standards. I did a little hunt for this when this thread started and found out that there are various goods and materials that are offered for protecting both written and electronic data. There are things like file cabinets with very professional dual combination locks to data destruction programs and physical units.

If you do a search for: "data protection standards" & "data security standards, government" you will be surprised that there is a whole industry selling HDD destruction units, etc. Some of them are exactly as I described: a solenoid-type crushing device and another is a electro magnet clam-type unit. Interesting goods for tens of thousands of dollars. However they seem to most all be low-tech..... I suppose there is no reason why a high-tech system wouldn't function as efficiently but there seems to be an almost universal push toward the "hammer & shackle".

[sdjsdj]

Ohh, 1kW will simply not do for my needs :) Megalomania's Microwave Melter will be a 6kW machine using multiple magnetrons, and multiple magnetron electronics. This might end up as Special Project #2

:eek:
That's going to be, ah, quite a machine.
I'm sure I don't have to tell you, but cooling something like that isn't going to be as simple as leaving holes in the case. And please don't nuke yourself, that is rather a lot of power.:p

Hmm . . . keeping it in anaerobic conditions would be a pain (I don't think it can set without oxygen) but some kind of system to inject the drive with high pressure, pre-mixed epoxy might do the trick. It's at least as strong as the platter, sets fast, and produces a fair amount of heat in the process.

[megalomania]

I just noticed this thread is in the Chemistry section, and this has little to do with chemistry, so I am moving it to the Detonation and Demolition section since it is about destroying something.

I will try water cooling my magnetrons with methods similar to water cooling computer CPUs.