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DARPA Seeks To Secure Data With Electronics That Dissolve On Command
An anonymous reader writes "Electronic devices are built to last, which make them very reliable. However, if during a hostile situation such a device has to be left behind or gets dropped, it will continue to function and could end up giving the enemy an advantage. With that in mind, DARPA has set about creating electronics that work for as long as necessary, but can be destroyed at a moment's notice. The project is called Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR). Its main aim is to develop so-called transient electronics that are capable of dissolving completely, or at the very least to the point where they no longer function. Destroying a VAPR device should be as easy as sending a signal to it or placing the device within certain conditions e.g. extreme heat or cold, that triggers the rapid destruction process."
I would be interested to know why its a "destroy on command" instead of a "sign in to keep working" strategy. Seems like it would be simpler to just have the electronics degrade if not being used by an authorized user.
I heard Boeing has some batteries that meet these requirements.
--- Eat my sig.
"Electronic devices are built to last...." Sorry, but you just lost me, right there.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
They were the top vapor developers for *years*. They've got the talent do this correctly.
Paul
You could just as Asus to build them. I don't know anyone who received a functioning model until they'd sent it back at least twice.
Nuke it from orbit, its the only way to be sure.
Looks like a flaw in the triggering code that allowed the other team to trigger the self-destruct could be a very costly mistake.
Obfuscated electronics design contest: solving a simple problem in a complex manner. Destruction of battlefield electronics is not a new science. A small gridwork of thermite inside the case and a small igniter. Trigger how you will.
Don't we have better things to spend research money on?
It's just VAPRware. Actually after I see it, it's probably VAPRware too.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Destroying a VAPR device should be as easy as sending a signal to it or placing the device within certain conditions e.g. extreme heat or cold, that triggers the rapid destruction process."
That's easy enough.
I just put my phone through the wash. I can assure you that it's quite dead now.
--
BMO
I have a brilliant design for electronics that stop functioning when exposed to extreme heat. I call them "electronics". I'm willing to license my technology, which is applicable to other resources too, like clothing, houses, and enemy combatants.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
I could see this being accomplished through DNA computing, where you literally kill the device.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
This isn't a specific DARPA program, there are two main goals, which could lead to very distinct classes of techniques:
Give it a decade and the internals of every new electronic consumer device will magically dissolve when it gets to two years old.
Planned obsolescence, indeed.
From the things I've heard from friends and acquaintances, mobile phone manufacturers already employ this technology.
That's the current plan --- you have thermite charges to destroy equipment (and sledgehammers to break down and consolidate equipment into suitably small piles), and ``document disintegration barrels'' for all the paperwork --- the problems are:
- takes time
- requires warehousing special-purpose munitions which have to be rotated (a water-damaged DDR-55 will _not_ completely burn and when one attempts to destroy it by setting off a thermite charge on top of it will then spew bits of burning thermite in all directions DAMHIKT)
- requires special training for personnel
- is not something one wants to be doing on an aircraft or in some other enclosed space
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
..will self-destruct in five seconds.
or having a reverse wired circuit on one or more electrolytic capacitors (which would also provide a handy source for a trigger acid)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Great Idea ! What could possibly go wrong ????
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
The Jolly Roger wants to tell you about a wonderful thing called the Thermite Reaction.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Remember how electronics used to be embedded in epoxy?
Do the same but replace epoxy with C4. Drive one GPIO pin to a blasting cap. The electronics will be "dissolved" completely.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I saw blue smoke way back in the 60s. I thought this research was already done.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Just put a bag of iron oxide and aluminum powder next to the hard disk and stick a piece of magnesium ribbon into it.
One match, and I guarantee no readable data will be found in the resulting puddle of slag.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Kids these days. Should be "Good morning, Mr. Phelps."
Easy - Make the heart of the system an FPGA, and in the scenario of the device being lost / obtained / dropped either:
(a) Erase the FPGA prom and reset - this would cause the FPGA to lose its configuration data, and no longer function without a rebuild
or
(b) Assuming that they are using bitstream encryption, delete or burn out the key - again, the device would no longer program.
Back in the early 60s, there was still a vast amount of military electronics surplus available from WWI and the Korean wars. This cornucopia of gear was the delight of all of us young radio and electronics enthusiasts. The amateur radio press of the time warned that occasionally equipment would turn up that still had thermite scuttling charges in place - apparently some bits of gear were sensitive enough that they included thermite bombs built in that could be easily triggered when capture was imminent. I never personally saw any, but saw pictures in the journals of the time. So, anyway, this is hardly a new idea
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Mr. Phelps, your mission, should you decide to accept it...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
As always, should you or any of your I.M. Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.
*poof*
"Antipersonnel landmines used by the United States, with the exception of those now warehoused for use in Korea, do not have long-term residual effects because they are self-destructing and/or self-deactivating"
Reference here
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
One match, and I guarantee no readable data will be found in the resulting puddle of slag.
Perhaps they are looking for a slightly less ostentatious display of destruction in order to attract less attention.
I've destroyed lots of electronics during "experiments" to "improve functionality". It's really easy. Just wire something wrong or let a tool slip and it lets the blue smoke out. As we all know, electronics run on blue smoke and when you let the blue smoke out, they stop working.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
What a wonderful anti-theft strategy!!! Laptop or iPhone stolen? Just logon, click the button and let the satellite send the self-destruct signal...
Karma: Bad
Former is too slow and relies on power... Latter could work if set up right, although thermite on the storage unit would be better. No explosion, more damage to the target.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Use general purpose electronics and store everything important in RAM. Virtualise if necessary.
I believe thermite has been around since about 1900.
This iPhone will selfdestruct in 10 seconds...
That would hand The Enemy an easy method of sabotage.
Only if the designer and/or user of the equipment is rather stupid.
If you want the authorized user to be the one to determine when the gear should (and should not) be sacrificed, it has to be "destroy on command".
It's pretty easy to think of circumstances where you would want it destroyed for anyone except the intended user. Sensitive document transport, various black ops activities, etc. If you are a spy you might very well want your electronics to dissolve unless someone knows the correct password.
Now I wish I could find a wiring web page I saw a long time ago.
Something like:
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Somehow I see this being circumvented by users. Just like other means of security such as annoying passwords can be defeated by users and a simple posted note, I am sure users afraid of continually loosing there data at any time will backup whatever they are doing to something that doesn't self destruct if you knock it the wrong way or whatever.
I believe they might take longer than a dissolving disk platter. I can't know that, but I believe that might be the case. DD might be interrupted if your command post is overrun, or penetrated. A simple signal to dissolve is probably irreversible, and depending on the mechanism, might be much faster.
Of course, for dissolving platters to work, I guess you'd have to abandon iron disks, for some kind of a matrix that holds iron in suspension. That might be more complicated, or less, than making plain magnetic iron disks.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
IBM could not be reached for comment.
But the GP raises an interesting question about what happens when an enemy has the ability to press a button and turn all your most critical battlefield C&C gear into slag.
If it truly is that easy to do then you deserve to lose the battle. Just because something can be destroyed easily doesn't mean it has to be easy for anyone to destroy it.
If this technology is realized and becomes cheap, any bets on whether or not it becomes the standard for consumer electronics?
After all, it's the ultimate kill switch. Whether it's government agencies looking to disable citizens' tech devices for whatever spurious 'justification' they make up, or corporations arbitrarily and absolutely enforcing 'planned obsolescence', I predict that very bad things will be done with this if it ever becomes sufficiently cost-effective to be mass-produced.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
I think Boeing already has such technology in their Dreamliners.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Aside from L. Ron Hubbard being cuckoo for Coca Puffs, he had a similar idea for dissolving circuits in his novel Battlefield Earth. He wrote some great Science Fiction, however I do not endorse Scientology, Dianetics or any of his other cult ideologies.
I remember in the book Battlefield Earth, the invaders had protected their technology by making a dummy circuit with traditional methods, but etching the actual circuit at a molecular level to make it invisible. When the system detected that it was being tampered with or opened without the proper methods, it blew the dummy circuit to look like it was booby-trapped, and then wiped out the actual circuit to eliminate all the traces. Anyone who didn't know how to properly work around the tamper would end up with a dead board. I'm curious, but do things like that exist in modern hardware? I'd love to have the community chime in on how forensic analysis and/or reverse engineering of circuits is done these days, and methods of preventing it from occurring.
Heard a variation on this story more than 20 years ago...
The HCF instruction was built into the motorola 6800.
>This message will self destruct!
Kids these days. Should be "Good morning, Mr. Phelps."
but nobody under 40 knows what you are talking about.
mfwright@batnet.com
And for alla you Mission Impossible fans, that's *not* my reaction.
Chief: Max, when the password prompt comes up, you've got three chances to get it right, otherwise it will self destruct.
Max: Right, chief, here's a bad password (types) here's a second bad password (types) Now I'll type the correct one...
Cheif: Max, what's happened?
Max: I must have mistyped the good password....
And I can see the folks who use the coffee cup holder on their computer doing this....
mark
Hahaha! You beat me to it. Yes. Sony was the first thing I thought when I read the summary. "Don't they already have a patent on this?!"
If they are not going to wear "Nascar" jackets with patched of all the folks in their pockets they could at least make these suits that could vaporize them if needed...
Mines that would 'expire' so they will not fire after a set time would be a step forward (pun intended).
love is just extroverted narcissism
Kids these days. Should be "Good morning, Mr. Phelps."
but nobody under 40 knows what you are talking about.
Or even worse, thinks you're tapping into Tom Cruise.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Well chief, I guess I should be off then. I'm always on duty!
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
That's the "our encryption is unbreakable" argument. Let me know how that works out for you.
Exactly how do you propose The Enemy figure out the right key for each device? You can easily have a unique destruct code for each device which is vaguely close to a one time pad setup. The only way for The Enemy to destroy the device is to either A) get the code from The Good Guys or B) crack the encryption. If the device has a self destruct timer (or accelerometer or geo-locator or...) and the encryption is sufficiently robust it could be very difficult to crack in a sufficiently short time even with physical access. Without physical access it could be effectively impossible. Even cracking one device wouldn't enable The Enemy to do anything with the others unless The Good Guys do something stupid like reuse keys.
Basically a well designed system would be pretty hard to disable. The device just has to last long enough to do its job, not be impregnable for the rest of time.
Please. Juice of Sappho.
As David Lynch wrote:
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
Fun fact--in the original pilot and several episodes in the first season (including some after the tape had been introduced), the message was on a self-incinerating *vinyl record*.
The civilian opportunities for this sound great. When compelled to give up a password or your devices are otherwise being examined without your permission, the same function used to protect private data.
Q: What's your password?
A: Phe!ps
Q: What's that smoke smell?
If they destroy the keys, IPs, and URLs used to access hosted data but not hosted data, it would prevent easy access. People can be tortured to give up information so they had cyanide teeth to bite on but devices are easy—just use them even if you have to break into their security—in time you can. So maybe this is the equivalent of a cyanide tooth for access electronics.
Lt. [Redacted] : "Where's the abort button?!"
Sound of deep throated rumbling in the background
Sgt. [Redacted] : "It melted, sir"
Lt. [Redacted] : "WHAT?! Why on God's green Earth would it MELT?!"
Fighting to be heard over what is obviously the sound of an rocket lifting off
Sgt. [Redacted] : "It's a safety feature, sir. To preserve the integrity of the mission."
Lt. [Redacted] : "FERCRYIN' OUT LOUD!! WE'RE STILL IN THE LAUNCH T..."
BZZZT!*~
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Original episodes: "After listening, this recording will self-destruct in 10 seconds..."
New episodes: "After finding pi to 5,000,000,000 decimal places, this Linux cluster will self-destruct in 10 seconds..."
Table-ized A.I.
Glad to see I'm not the only person on this board old enough to remember the original Mission Impossible TV series: "This tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds" followed by a smoking real-to-real tape player.
placing the device within certain conditions e.g. extreme heat or cold, that triggers the rapid destruction process.
Extreme heat already destroys electronics
A little bonfire or some thermite or black powder should be very effective, unless the electronics were intentionally designed to withstand extreme heat....
Kids these days. Should be "Good morning, Mr. Phelps."
but nobody under 40 knows what you are talking about.
Or even worse, thinks you're tapping into Tom Cruise.
I thought only Miscavige was tapping Tom Cruise? He still trapped in the closet?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I was thinking proximity detections... if it is too far away from an RFID on the person, then self-destruct (as opposed to some cars which just lock).
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
So let's wait for them to implement that and watch the fireworks when Anonymous destroys the whole U.S. military.
If you truly think such a thing will happen then you are dumber than a Styrofoam submarine.
Not that anyone would notice now that the DoD ensures no soldier ever sees real combat, only mercenaries do nowadays, because those have zero oversight.
I have family in the army serving in the Middle East who would be very surprised to hear that they never see any real combat. Is the view nice from the cheap seats?