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M.2 SSD Can Self-Destruct by Giving Itself a Burst of Voltage

M.2 SSD Can Self-Destruct by Giving Itself a Burst of Voltage

7 comments

·July 14, 2025
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bhaney

ATA_REQUEST_THERMITE_RELEASE

ATA_POLL_THERMITE_RELEASED // always returns 0. Assume 1 if timeout

elchananHaas

Flash chips, unlike hard drives, are highly reliant on their controllers. If you hit it with a hammer the data is unrecoverable. No need for a voltage zap.

MarkusWandel

If smartphones can wipe themselves irrecoverably on factory reset by simply throwing away the storage encryption key, why not do the same thing and avoid all the trouble? Surely erasing 512 bits or so, irrecoverably, can be done quickly.

beeflet

seems unnecessary with encryption

dafelst

You can be compelled to give up encryption passphrases, either through legal process or by force. If that data is irrecovably and provably erased, that is no longer an avenue for access.

beeflet

put part of the symmetric encryption key in volatile memory

SketchySeaBeast

You know, sometimes security through obscurity works. If you can't find all the pieces you certainly aren't going to retrieve their data.