Is using MicroSD cards a good way to store data so that you can destroy quickly incase an adversary is about to seize control of it?
Is using MicroSD cards a good way to store data so that you can destroy quickly incase an adversary is about to seize control of it?
So I learned that if a MicroSD card gets snapped in half, its unrecoverable.
Okay, so suppose you were in war, and enemy soldiers were about to raid you. You just snap the cards in half and the data is un-recoverable, right?
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As long as the silicon got snapped and not just the softer plastic around the silicon.
If it's actually important data that a nation state would want, most of the data could still be read off with an electron microscope.
That's a consumer data recovery company. They aren't going to use an electron microscope like a nation state, university, or dedicated emulation hacker.
https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/how-to-read-from-an-eeprom/
The first two links that you posted don't appear to cover electron microscopy at all. The last appears to show a potential method of attack--which is noted in the link that I posted--but does not seem to show that it's actually been successfully implemented. ("Using SEM operator-free acquisition and standard image processing technique we demonstrate the possible [emphasis added] automating of such technique over a full memory. [...] The technique is a first step [emphasis added] for reverse engineering secure embedded systems.")
Sorry the first link was wrong but the second link was a research paper that showed them doing it.
Just google electron microscope eeprom and you will find hundreds of documents on the procedure. The second link I provided wasn't theoretical. It showed it actually being done.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312551555_Reverse_engineering_Flash_EEPROM_memories_using_Scanning_Electron_Microscopy "All those parameters allowed us to obtain clear differences between '0' and '1' states as seen in Figure 4. It has to be noted that this image is obtained without additional image processing to highlight differences between '0' and '1' states."
"demonstrate the possible [emphasis added] automating "
It doesn't say it isn't possible but that they have a possible way of AUTOMATING it. That is instead of someone looking at the image and reading off the bits into bytes, they could take the image and output the data without human intervention.
This article is focused on reading them electrically.
I too have heard you can read flash storage with electron microscopes.
most of the data could still be read off with an electro microscop
So what you're saying is that, its recoverable, just not by the average data recovery company.
Yes
Your best bet would be to shred the data multiple times (for example with the shred command) and then break the card physically. But shredding takes time so I guess that's not very applicable to your case.
If you have a lighter, you also can try to melt the SD card's insides. That should be impossible to recover.
In any case, you should keep it encrypted all the time and only decrypt it on the fly. For example with LUKS2.
Shredding might not work the way you expect on a SD card.
The memory cells in a SD Card can only handle a limited amount of write operations. A SD card typically has more cells than needed, so the controller can switch through different cells to improve the overall lifetime of the card. Which means you can't be sure which cells gets rewritten when shredding, so the data you want to be gone, could still be readable.
If you want to secure your data, use strong encryption. Because what you gonna do, if you can't destroy or get rid of the SD card?
So I probably shouldn’t store my MacOS time machine backups on a 250GB microSD card? (It was the only practical thing I had when I started it and I never got around to changing it)
I don't know how MacOS time machine works exactly, but if it constantly writes on the SD card you should consider changing to an external SSD or HDD. The best backup isn't helpful if your backup medium dies.
I’ll switch over to something more reliable. Thanks!
So that's why I recovered 4GB of pictures out of a 1GB card from my dad's camera huh? TIL
I was going to say burn it too.
And if you really want to burn it good look into getting/making thermite.
At that point chewing on it might be your best bet
Are your teeth able to do significant damage? You can of course dent the plastic shell, but the inside is protected by harder things.
The silicon die could easily chip a tooth as well, the stuff is insanely hard.