Fantasy Or Reality GCHQ Odd Ideas On How Destruct A Laptop - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Sionyn
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2015, 02:40:12 pm
content: Now i get that these controller chips store data yes but i dont see how a battery control chip have any information that could allow for parallel analysis type of attack.Have GCHQ watched a bit too much CSI ?

author: dexters_lab
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 18, 2015, 06:10:57 pm
content: i watched this earlier today...was an interesting feature, though the fact that many ICs have updatable firmware and storage comes as no surprised here i would imagine. but they did seem to imply that the reasons for this are somewhat covert and secret rather than just the advancement and increasing complexity of electronics, especially in consumer items.i am sure these particular ICs could be used for capturing data, the likelihood has got to be extremely slim, unless your really really interesting to surveillance authoritiesbut choosing to destroy particularly the ICs that have internal storage of their own sounds like good practice if your dealing with national security

author: orion242
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 19, 2015, 01:04:20 am
content: I saw that video yesterday also.With all the examples of SSDs, HDs, BIOS, and flash drives that can have their firmware updated with basically undetectable malware lately, it would seem their fears are pretty well justified. Governments have no resource limits holding them back in finding these issues and using them against their targets. They are very likely to know what poses an issue and what doesn't.Looks like today if you really want to wipe your system, you best incinerate it...

author: orion242
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 19, 2015, 01:28:34 am
content: For those interested, Security Now episode 495 is the one where they talk about malware that overwrites HD firmware which is write only. It basically makes it rather difficult to remove and impossible to scan for. Reformatting is useless, as its in the drives firmware and will simply reinstall itself each boot. Maybe re-flashing the drive may remove it, but since it owns the drive at that point there is no guarantee it couldn't persist.https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-495-notes.pdfhttps://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2015, 04:18:30 pm
content: Just toss the computer into a blast Furness.Nothing will survive that.I read something a few years back where researchers in New Zealand had read data from a hard disk using a tunnelling electron microscope after the data had been deliberately overwritten a dozen times or more, so I guess what the GCHQ and others do to eradicate certain data is not over the top.

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2015, 04:44:25 pm
content: We have here in the news these days a case where a politician wiped a personal email server that contained among other things top secret information. The FBI got the server and is now trying to recover its data, hopping to understand what was stored on that server, what security mechanism were used and if the server was compromised.