A close shave: How to destroy your hard drives without burning down the data centre

[Batu69]

Thermite, kinetic shock and power surges tested

DEF CON 23 Four years ago at DEF CON a popular presentation examined how best to destroy hard drives in a data centre within 60 seconds of a three-letter agency knocking at the door. Now, that research has been updated with new techniques.

Security researcher Zoz looked at three core methods for destroying platter and SSD drives – thermal, explosive and electric – within a simulated 1U frame. A successful technique would have to make the drives unreadable, not damage other data centre equipment and not threaten human life.

It turns out that this is surprisingly difficult to achieve. >>>