I would take the $100 loss and use a sledgehammer on it. It's not worth
losing company data.
-----Original Message-----
From: jpippin [mailto:jpippin@nc.rr.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 8:21 PM
To: forensics@securityfocus.com
Subject: Securely wiping a "dead" usb pen drive
Anyone have any idea how to wipe a solid state, lipstick sized usb drive
before returning it to the manufacturer for a replacement? The drive
stopped
responding while performing a complete file encryption of the data using
the
manufacturer's software. I have no reason to believe that everything was
actually encrpyted before we hit a nonresponsive state. The drive still
shows up when plugged into any usb port, but browsing gives an error and
a
notice that the drive must be formatted to continue - which doesn't
work,
either.
This usb drive holds company data and two credit card numbers, and
although
we can no longer access the information, it is still seen by the OSes,
which
forces me to infer a potential security risk if the manufacturer can
still
read the data. It's not worth the $100 loss for a new one if I can't be
reasonable sure it's unreadable. That said, is there a decent option to
wipe
such an inaccessable device? Magnets won't work on eeprom chips that I'm
aware, and microwave seems kinda questionable, so I'm open for
suggestions.
Thanks.
Joel
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