Mission Possible: Self-Destructing Phones Are Now a Reality (yahoo.com)

drunkdrone quotes the International Business Times: Self-destructing gadgets favored by the likes of James Bond and Mission: Impossible's Ethan Hunt have taken one step closer to reality. Researchers in Saudi Arabia have developed a mechanism that, when triggered, can destroy a smartphone or other electronic device in as little as 10 seconds. The self-destruct mechanism has been created by electrical engineers at the King Abdulla University of Science and Technology and consists of a polymer layer that rapidly expands when subjected to temperatures above 80 degrees Celsius, effectively bursting the phone open from the inside. The mechanism can be adapted to be triggered in various ways, including remotely through a smartphone app or when it's subjected to pressure.

Once triggered, power from the device's battery is directed to electrodes that rapidly heat, causing the polymer layer to expand to around seven times its original size within 10-15 seconds. This crushes the vital components inside the device, destroying any information stored on board.
One engineer believes the phone will see adoption in the intelligence and financial communities, though it can also be retrofitted to existing phones for just $15. This raises an interesting question -- would you want a self-destructing phone?

Comments

I seriously doubt this works...

[Anonymous Coward]

"This crushes the vital components inside the device, destroying any information stored on board."

Excuse me? You're trying to crush a chunk of silicon wrapped in epoxy (a flash chip) using reaction force generated by a case designed to be as thin and light as possible and not designed to withstand internal pressure?

I think the case is far easier to pop than the chip is to crush.

Somehow I doubt this actually makes things unrecoverable.

Re:I seriously doubt this works...

[hey!]

Every security measure has to be compared to the particular threat you're worried about. A system that renders a phone non-functional would thwart local or even provincial police, but not an entiity which possesses "national means". Or an engineering school with EE labs.

So the self-destructing phone is not entirely ridiculous when looked at this way. However, you also have to compare a security measure against other means of accomplishing the same thing, and that's where the self-destructing phone looks ridiculous. Apple's approach is much more effective, but less dramatic.

Re:I seriously doubt this works...

[markdavis]

Exactly. It doesn't make sense to try and crush the components... that likely won't destroy the flash storage, anyway.

The only thing that needs to be destroyed is the storage. So design the storage so it can be zapped. When triggered, have the batteries zap it with a a stepped up voltage. No explosion. No crush. No fire. No noise. Not even visible to others. Just zapped storage. Problem solved- phone is permanently bricked.

Why?

[XSportSeeker]

I don't understand the need for some sort of special polymer layer or whatever... if you wanna make something that's either automated or dependant of some sort of command, just make a needle module to puncture the Li-po battery.
Perhaps they wanted to avoid the Samsung lawsuit? xD

How reliable is the destruction?

[mi]

This crushes the vital components inside the device, destroying any information stored on board.

I doubt that last part rather strongly. A local police department may be stumbled getting the child porn out of a phone so destroyed, but an FBI lab will have no problem.

I thought, they'll release a drop of special acid onto the memory chip. But 80 degrees Celsius is not all that hot... Overclockers, supposedly, go up to 85 before their computers crash. The memory ought to avoid permanent damage at even higher temperatures.

On a plane?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Would you want to fly on a plane knowing the dipstick next to you had one of these? Or how about in a hazardous or flammable environment?

Look for these to be banned from commercial airline flights and be prohibited in lots of other places.

And of course that's not even getting into the "what if someone hacks it and makes it self-destruct" question. Not that a bad guy would ever do that, nooooo.

This seems pretty dubiously useful.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This seems like a rather touchy solution looking for a problem.

Unless you really enjoy buying replacement hardware; the need to have battery power in order to trigger the kill switch is a problem. If you don't configure the device to self-destruct when its battery is on the verge of no longer having enough energy to perform a self destruct; all the attacker has to do is run the battery down. If you do configure it that way, forgetting to put it on the charger could get expensive and tedious rather fast(in addition to the various other issues that can interrupt battery power: overtemp protection kicking in in a hot car; current delivery capability falling under freezing conditions, etc.)

Plus, the battery, and its connection to the logic boards, tend to be among the larger and more obvious parts of a modern electronic widget. That makes them good candidates for controlled disconnection/destruction, even if you can't open the case without tripping some sort of anti-tamper mechanism.

Finding a good self-destruct temperature is also a bit tricky. The lower you go, the closer you get to the high end of normal operating conditions or the 'device won't operate; but should not be permanently damaged' range. 80 degrees is high for flash memory; but most CPUs will be happy enough to run that hot. The higher you go; the more power you need to be able to deliver to kick off the destruction; and the more vulnerable you are to an attacker who is able to apply coolant to slow you down; limit current or voltage delivered to the resistive heater, or both.

Re:This seems pretty dubiously useful.

[gweihir]

All valid points. But the killer is that the designers of this thing are obviously completely clueless on how to securely erase data from flash. They just went for "spectacular" and completely overlooked "effective".

When you look at it, as soon as you have some power, the simple, clean and effective way is this: Erase a crypto-key from RAM that was used to encrypt anything important. Nothing more is needed. Noting is more secure. And yet, you cannot buy phones with that. Why? Because the whole idea does not work.