SSDs harder to securely erase than standard hard disks

jmke · 18th February 2011, 15:48

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have found that erasing sensitive data stored on Solid State hard drives (SSD’s) may not be as easy or reliable as they thought.

Two PhD students at the University’s Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory have presented research at this month’s USENIX Conference on File Storage Technologies that show even on-device secure erase commands may be buggy - and ineffective at removing sensitive data that may be stored on the SSD.

The researchers used a FPGA-based flash hardware tester named Ming the Merciless to analyse the data left on the SSD’s raw NAND flash chips, which are used to do the actual storage, and bypass any software built into the SSD’s interface.

http://www.techeye.net/security/ssds...#ixzz1EKH5Pead

18th February 2011, 15:48	#1
jmke Madshrimp Join Date: May 2002 Location: 7090/Belgium Posts: 79,021	SSDs harder to securely erase than standard hard disks Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have found that erasing sensitive data stored on Solid State hard drives (SSD’s) may not be as easy or reliable as they thought. Two PhD students at the University’s Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory have presented research at this month’s USENIX Conference on File Storage Technologies that show even on-device secure erase commands may be buggy - and ineffective at removing sensitive data that may be stored on the SSD. The researchers used a FPGA-based flash hardware tester named Ming the Merciless to analyse the data left on the SSD’s raw NAND flash chips, which are used to do the actual storage, and bypass any software built into the SSD’s interface. http://www.techeye.net/security/ssds...#ixzz1EKH5Pead __________________

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