this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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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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[–] daggermoon@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)
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[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 48 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] GreatBlue@infosec.pub 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

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?

[–] Glory_of_Fire@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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)

[–] GreatBlue@infosec.pub 1 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] admin@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

So that's why I recovered 4GB of pictures out of a 1GB card from my dad's camera huh? TIL

[–] Kowowow@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

At that point chewing on it might be your best bet

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Are your teeth able to do significant damage? You can of course dent the plastic shell, but the inside is protected by harder things.

[–] despoticruin@lemm.ee 7 points 3 days ago

The silicon die could easily chip a tooth as well, the stuff is insanely hard.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)
[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.")

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

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.

[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 1 points 3 days ago

This article is focused on reading them electrically.

I too have heard you can read flash storage with electron microscopes.

[–] wildcardology@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago

You can just throw it and nobody can find it especially if you are outside.

[–] truthfultemporarily@feddit.org 19 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] LoganNineFingers@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Anyone know what this software is called?

[–] noxypaws@pawb.social 1 points 2 days ago
[–] Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io 3 points 3 days ago

It was Bush II, the shrub, that really impressed on me the importance of maintaining plausible deniability.

[–] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I absolutely would not count on a snapped in half MicroSD to protect the data that's on it from someone determined to find out what it was. You don't even know if you actually managed to break the memory chips themselves or just the connections between them, which with time and patience and the right equipment could be reconnected, and even if the chips are broken a great deal of the data on them will still remain intact, etched in silicon for eternity and vulnerable not only to current technology but also future technology.

Your goal is turning the data stored on your MicroSD card into a puzzle. A 2 piece puzzle is likely quite solvable even today. To properly vaporize the card and make it actually unreadable you'd likely need to do some experimentation and try things you would potentially have access to in war like fire, gunfire, explosives or corrosive chemicals, some combinations of which may serve to well and truly annihilate any hint of structure. The question is how many tiny pieces can you break that MicroSD card into, if that number is a human-countable or even human-comprehensible number like the number of pieces a document typically gets shredded into, then it's probably not safe enough to consider it reliably destroyed.

If people can tape back together shredded documents to get the basic idea of what was written on them, someone can likewise theoretically repair your MicroSD to get a large proportion of the stored data from it if they are absolutely intent on doing so. It's probably a lot of work, and maybe not even a not-worth-it amount of work depending on how important your data might be, and there might be a substantial amount of data unrecoverable and missing, but it can be done. Unless you make it a puzzle with so many pieces that doing so is mathematically implausible and just as likely to be an incorrect reconstruction of data that might say anything the reconstructor imagines it does, without actually giving them any confidence that it is real and correct. The only thing that's certain is that 2 is probably not a good enough number of pieces to rely on for that to be the case.

As an alternative to the fire/gunfire/explosives/acid style methods, you might also use sandpaper (would take awhile), or better yet a grinder tool of some sort (dremel, angle grinder, bench grinder) to give yourself some confidence that the card has truly been turned to a pile of arbitrary dust. Even then, I'd still concerns as the data density increases, a single speck of MicroSD dust from a 1TB card shredded into millions of pieces might still contain 1 MB of data -- that's an awful lot of text and even potentially some images if it can be decoded. They really prove surprisingly hard to destroy. Electrical attacks, even Microwave ovens, reportedly have mixed results and don't sound like reliable approaches either.

If you can get it to a molten state, that's your highest confidence method. Silicon has a melting point of 1,414 °C, good luck.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 8 points 3 days ago

A 2 piece puzzle is likely quite solvable even today.

No data has ever been successfully recovered from a broken NAND chip. It's not expected to be possible in the near future. It's MUCH more complicated than you thing.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] glitch1985@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Bonus points for shitting it out in multiple places also.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

... 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.

[–] bastion@feddit.nl 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 days ago

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.

[–] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Stick it between the prong of an electric plug, then plug into an outlet. Instafried

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Just encrypt your data and don't tell them the key that you've memorized. If you have trouble forgetting things, use a hammer.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

key that you’ve memorized

use a hammer

👀

[–] whodatdair@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 days ago

Unexpected xkcd

[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

How is the hammer supposed to help me memorize the key?

[–] ch00f@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It’s to help you forget the key and effectively destroy the data.

[–] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 1 points 2 days ago
[–] zout@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Keep a soldering iron nearby

So I can use it on the soldiers?

Got it 😎

[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

Better if you always carry a pocket lighter.

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Why are you so concerned about the destruction of data? This is the 3rd post in 2 days from you along these lines

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Lol, sorry I just get obsessed with data archival and related things. 😉

[–] lud@lemm.ee 1 points 2 days ago

Isn't this the opposite of archival though?

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 days ago

Whatever floats your boat, I suppose. To answer the question, removable data storage is fine in general, but in my experience microsd cards can be a little unreliable for the long term. Just make sure the silicon breaks to destroy e

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[–] nesc@lemmy.cafe 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Soldiers don't look for your sdcards, they shoot people. If you are planning on moving through block posts where your things are cheked it's better for you not to have weird sdcards either broken or not. But you can have one in your phone. There are ways to hide encrypted data so it won't be detected e.g. veracrypt hidden volumes.

[–] guy@piefed.social 3 points 3 days ago

Soldiers very much look through your data. When reports could still make it out from occupied parts of Ukraine there was reports of civilians having their phones checked

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No, but you can smuggle them by eating them.

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[–] gasgiant@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago

Snapping sounds like a real faff.

Keep them all in a special plastic box that is inside a powerful electromagnet.

Push button and a field that is strong enough to damage the cards almost instantly and over a short time would generate enough heat to physically damage the cards.

With enough power and time you could turn them into one hot blob that wouldn't even be recognisable.

So near instant data damage and then physical destruction probably before someone can work out what's going on.

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