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?
You can just throw it and nobody can find it especially if you are outside.
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.
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.
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.
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 way to do this is plausible deniability. There is software that allows creating an encrypted volume with two passwords, resulting in two different decrypted volumes. So you give the duress password and there is no incriminating data on there.
For example grapheneOS also has a duress pin that wipes the device.
Just encrypt your data and don’t tell them the key that you’ve memorized. If you have trouble forgetting things, use a hammer.
key that you’ve memorized
use a hammer
👀
Unexpected xkcd
Smash it with a hammer for a minute or two, then microwave the chunks.
That’ll probably do the trick.
Alternatively, smash it, eat it, shit it out later at not where you live.
Bonus points for shitting it out in multiple places also.
… I …uh…
I dunno how you’d be able to actually accomplish that.
You could poo in multiple places over the course of a few days… but chances are the actual remnants of the sd card would come out in the same poo.
ok, here:
put it in a blender, and then put the resultant powder in a pepper shaker that’s about 1/4 full. Use it normally to heavily for various meals until fully consumed in order to have maximal sd/poop dispersion.
Damnit.
Yeah, ok, that would work.
Congratulations, you have invented a new spice, made of mostly microplastics and a dash of metals, a few of which can bioaccumulate and cause organ / nervous system disruption.
I never knew twisted pride could feel so good.
