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Man Swallows USB Flash Drive Evidence
SlideRuleGuy writes "In a bold and bizarre attempt to destroy evidence seized during a federal raid, a New York City man grabbed a flash drive and swallowed the data storage device while in the custody of Secret Service agents. Records show Florin Necula ingested the Kingston flash drive shortly after his January 21 arrest outside a bank in Queens. A Kingston executive said it was unclear if stomach acid could damage one of their drives. 'As you might imagine, we have no actual experience with someone swallowing a USB.' I imagine that would be rather painful. But did he follow his mother's advice and chew thoroughly, first? Apparently not, as the drive was surgically recovered."
Next time, dude should use a microSD card.
And maybe some mayo. Blegh.
The guy was counterfeiting. That doesn't hurt anyone, especially if the copies are really good.
But you're right. He should have chewed.
Couldn't they just wait for it to move through?
Best Slashdot Co
I am never, ever getting into the data recovery business.
Couldn't they have just, you know, waited?
data dump?
I always check before I swallow electronic evidence. I may be stupid but in my body I don't want more than the acceptable levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants.
Never have such charges been more appropriate.
After surgery, the suspect was quoted as saying, "And I thought I was regular before."
He could have just encrypted it! Wait... if he was thinking he could get away with that, he must have been too dumb to encrypt it.
Do Not Eat (if containing evidence in a federal investigation)
The enemies of Democracy are
He could have just been hungry..
http://www.dynamism.com/accessories/usb_sushi.shtml
... since, obviously, if they hadn't operated, the evidence would have to have been, by its nature, eliminated.
I'm just glad we never got raided when I was storing data on the Vax 6000 tape drives.
Quite frankly. While stomach acid might work to some degree, it's absolutely unreliable and we're not even getting to where it gets stuck inside of you and you're going to be unconscious when they retrieve it.
USB sticks are fragile and tiny. Even during a raid there is plenty of time to get rid of them or destroy them physically. Even if you're arrested on the street, your chances are higher to destroy what you have on you by throwing it on the street. Chances are, before they can retrieve it a few trucks passed over it, or it shattered from the impact altogether.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Favored USB Drives, will destroy all data with contact to stomach acid. Available now in FBI Mint, Police Cherry, and CIA Arsenic.
Get yours now!!! *WARNING NOT FOR CONSUMPTION*
Don't forget to use bio-compatible storage devices next time you commit a computer crime, and make sure they dissolve quickly in stomach acid.
--
Seriously, anyone who records criminal information on a computer without using "unbreakable" encryption* should understand the risks.
*Unbreakable would include a one-time pad where the pad is for practical purposes not available to the police. Absent quantum computing or something similar, it also includes strong encryption where the key cannot be recovered with less than brute-force methods and with a key strength sufficient to make a brute-force attack impractical. Of course, with quantum computing "right around the corner" and most serious-crime statutes of limitations being on the order of 5-7 years, don't be surprised if your "unbreakable" encryption gets broken before the statute of limitations expires.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
USB sticks are fragile and tiny. Even during a raid there is plenty of time to get rid of them or destroy them physically. Even if you're arrested on the street, your chances are higher to destroy what you have on you by throwing it on the street. Chances are, before they can retrieve it a few trucks passed over it, or it shattered from the impact altogether.
They may be tiny, but they are not fragile. The worst that is likely to happen if one is run over is that the connector gets crushed. That won't render the data irretrievably lost.
Seriously, try to break one of these things sometime. Without resorting to pliers or some kind of heavy duty shredder, it's pretty tough.
I wonder if it would be possible to make the printed circuit board out of a starch that would dissolve in water?
If the flash chips were erasable by exposure to light (like the old UV-erasable EPROMS), then just having the plastic enclosure dissolve away would be enough to destroy the data.
Putting moderation advice in your
Because that could make a great ad for Kingston.
On a side note, they make -- albeit expensive -- flash drives with a kill switch. If you're tromping around with incriminating data, it might not be a bad plan to pay a little more cash and be on the safe side. Not that the criminal element was ever known for their forethought.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
It was only a matter of time before the newly merged Frito-Kingston corporation cornered the chip market.
That green slime had it coming.
I tried a microwave oven once.
Worked perfectly (smelled awful), so... it's not hard if you're trying!
I imagine hooking it up to a brief 220 voltage source would probably do the trick as well - and laundering often works too. Not enough to be relied on, however, since I've laundered 3 flash drives and 1 worked.
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Seems like a bit of an over complex solution when you could
High volume+ effeceint:
1:
encrypt the drive.
2:
encrypt the drive with some deniable style system like truecrypt.
lower volume high secrecy:
3:
carry around a USB key full of your holiday snaps.... and hide an encrypted drive in the least significant bits of the photos.
Remember the old days when spies would swallow their instructions, written on paper (hopefully they had the foresight to use rice paper)?
I wonder whether this event might qualify for the largest documented quantity of artificially encoded information (as opposed to naturally encoded information like in DNA) ever ingested.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I work in a chem lab. I would be willing to volunteer time, expertise, and chemicals to test the effects of sulfuric acid at varying concentrations if someone would be willing to donate several Kingston USB drives to test on. Load em up with media and programs, soak in varying concentrations of the acid, clean with distilled water, let dry, attempt to access data. I would imagine the issue would be a matter of liquid tightness of the seals, the chemical makeup of the plastics and metals used in the flash drives, and if/how the bits retain their state on the drive (I don't know much about the way data is stored in the drives. Non-volatile I would imagine as the drives don't have power supplies.).
its a Message Digest...
I have washed and dried USB sticks before(Rally2) that have worked fine afterwords. It would be interesting to see how digestion effects them.
Plausible deniability is pretty much your best bet. The courts kind of frown on people who clearly / intentionally destroy incriminating evidence.
If, upon opening the truecrypt, all they find is a folder of "My favorite porn pics"... he's good to go.
Plus, unlike option 3, you don't have to roll any custom software.
This too, shall pass.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Would you want to be the guy having to retrieve it from the other end?
And this btw is the real life proof of the crypto-nerds fantasy being just that, a fantasy.
Crypto-nerd: Ooh I encrypted this file with a secret password that they can't break with a thousand super-computers.
Secret service: Hit him with this stick until he tells everything. If he doesn't, well that proves he was an highly trained enemy agent.
And WAY to give the game away. Now they know exactly where to look and that there is something to look for.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://xkcd.com/644/
From TFA:
A Kingston executive said it was unclear if stomach acid could damage a flash drive. "As you might imagine, we have no actual experience with someone swallowing a USB," Mike Sager wrote in an e-mail to TSG.
As opposed to, say, "HALP, I SWALLOWED A SERIAL!"
Quite frankly. While stomach acid might work to some degree, it's absolutely unreliable and we're not even getting to where it gets stuck inside of you and you're going to be unconscious when they retrieve it.
It's not absolutely reliable, but you could definitely do worse. Gastric acid is largely Hydrochloric acid, which reacts readily with metals like lead and copper commonly used in electronics.
That being said, I really wouldn't recommend eating a USB flash drive. It may or may not actually be effective in destroying the data, could require surgery to remove, could add some nice heavy metals to your diet, could get you charged with destruction of evidence, etc. Much easier to just encrypt the data and memorize the key. Encryption won't get you charged with destruction of evidence and you can't (yet) be forced to turn over passwords to assist in your prosecution (5th Amendment).
Isn't this man considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?
What right do they have to risk the life of a presumed innocent man with dangerous surgery? A surgery like this permanently disfigures, in our legal system you can't even sentence someone to disfigurement like this as punishment after they have been convicted of a crime!
If I were the man in question I would sue. If they try to press whatever charges are involved then I would claim double jeopardy, they have already exacted a cruel and unusual punishment.
I've machine washed and dried (accidentally of course) several Sandisk Cruzers, and all functioned perfectly well afterwards. (Yes, I'm comparing agitation in water and tumble dry to throwing it into the street)
I'd say bring a hammer and just smash it to bits.. even if by throwing it on the street you'd managed to crack the PCB or destroy the USB interface itself, you'd still likely have the actual storage chip intact and readable via other mechanisms. You'd want to smash item #4 in this reference image to dust.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
I dropped a Kingston USB drive in the parking lot at work & didn't realize it was missing till 2 rainy days later. When I found it, it had been ran over by at least one car & was sitting in a puddle. I let it dry out, bent the connector straight, plugged it in & got my data off of it.
There is a war going on for your mind.
The Woz used to tell stories of him making blueboxes rigged with thermite in case his customers were raided. Complicated true, but much more fun than a hammer.
this. I once dropped a USB out on the street in front of my parents house and didn't realize I had done so until the next day. I came outside to find the USB had been ran over several times. I still own said USB drive, and it still works just fine.
There's probably a market for a USB drive storage case with a battery operated high voltage power supply. See the cops coming, push the button and smoke them all.
Have gnu, will travel.
If I am ever involved in a crime I am going to have to make sure all of the incriminating stuff is on digestible flash drives.
And I suspect there will suddenly be a market for these soon. Watch soon for the "Kraft Foods Yum-Drive" series!
*clicks link*
*disappointed is no X-ray image turns on my screen*
RTFA
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
*NM*
Here's the "ads by google" that shows up for this article:
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I'm glad he didn't try to swallow that one!
Best "String" Ever!
Can they surgically remove the key without his consent?
I had to read your sig 4 times to get the joke inside the joke inside the joke. Well played!
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Printing money steals from everyone else with the currency. If you have some amount of value or wealth in your country in terms of goods and land, and suddenly there's twice as much money in circulation, everything would suddenly have to cost twice as much for the same amount of value to be exchanged. In essence, by introducing twice as much money into circulation, the money printer has just stolen half the wealth from all users of the currency.
If the money printer doesn't print twice as much as in circulation (geez!) but say 1% as much, it will prompt people to stop sitting on their savings in a deflationary economy and start spending and loaning the money again.
Remember money itself is not a commodity like bread; you can't eat it or build a house with it or clothe yourself with it. You use it to get other people to help you out with these things. It's a tool we use to operate an economy, and when the tool jams everything up by appreciating in value by itself, someone gets to do us all a favor by stealing it a little. The "theft" is handled by the government (as opposed to counterfeiters) since the government does not counterfeit its own currency.
No high voltage necessary. All you need is a straight 48VDC shot through the USB's power rail and the whole thing should be toasted. 24VDC might work but heck, you want to see the smoke for positive confirmation don't you?
If all things failed and there's a traditional POTS line available, the voltage difference between the line and ground will also work.
laundering often works too. Not enough to be relied on, however, since I've laundered 3 flash drives and 1 worked.
Embarrasingly I'm 2 for 2. Laundered twice and they both work. (Including full HOT dryer cycles).
mod +6 please
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Just use encryption and a really, really long password that is too long to remember. Write it on a bit of paper. If you need to destroy it, swallow the paper. It will be destroyed in your gut and you can honestly claim not to have ever known the password by memory.
Of course it's still destruction of evidence but depending on the crime that might be a much lesser charge.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If it were something like that, you can just deny to use the password via the 5th amendment (in the US anyhow).
The point is that you don't want anyone able to use the drive as evidence. Encryption isn't really 'all that', depending on how important you are.
Also - simply encrypting can make some charges appear more valid. "Why would you hide if you had nothing to hide?". It's BS but doesn't stop the argument. I say encrypt EVERYTHING, all the time, by default.
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
But will it blend?
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
The problem is there are at least three grades of data that you might have:
The problem with #2 is that in general law enforcement already knows what the material is and just requires it for "proof" at trial. So you encrypt it or destroy it - and the law enforcement folks can no longer use it at trial. However, they can use the fact it is encrypted and/or destroyed at trial. While not absolute proof, this can certainly be spun in a way that looks very, very bad. You are then faced with the plea bargain - 10 years if you admit to it or the possibility of 100 years if you don't. This sort of argument can be pretty persuasive.
For #3 it is a whole different ballgame. You are up against an adversary that needs the data and probably has no real idea. Say it is a list of Al Queda operatives within current law enforcement establishments in the UK. Every single one of them will likely be put to death should this list be discovered. What steps are you prepared to take to ensure this information doesn't fall into the wrong hands? Obviously, if you fall into law enforcement hands and they even suspect this information exists virtually nothing is going to stop them from gaining access to it. Suicide is probably required, but that still leaves the data hanging around.
So what do you do? Eating a USB drive probably isn't anywhere near good enough. I'd say holding the USB drive with a hand grenade (pin pulled, spoon flipped) in your armpit might be a good start.
I would like to think that nobody here has to worry about step 3 :)
But if they did, you'd want a custom-built USB drive with say, C4, or some heavy acid packets in it. Something you could rely on to self-destruct if you didn't activate it properly.
I would like to think that any agency that has this sort of data has these sorts of precautions. Unfortunately, I bet that some bean counter decided not to get that option and put countless lives at risk.
All my data is type 1 in your list. I encrypt all of it, mainly because I tend to lose drives. No sense making it *too* easy on people :)
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Actually there is a simple way around all that.
Truecrypt supports hidden containers. Basically you have an encrypted file with two passwords. One password unlocks the real data, and you keep that secret. The other unlocks some data which you are willing to give up. If you are required to hand over your password you simply give them the latter one.
There is no way to determine if a hidden container exists. Of course in some parts of the world they might torture you if they think there is one, but in less barbaric countries there is pretty much nothing they can do.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC