[Cryptography] Photon beam splitters for "true" random number generation ?

[John Denker]

On 12/24/2015 04:09 AM, Jerry Leichter wrote:

> In fact, short of physical destruction, there's no effective way to
> ensure that data written to an SSD is really gone.

That is true at the moment, in practice, AFAIK ... but it doesn't
have to be that way.  In particular, the controller on the SSD
could provide a verrrry effective crypto-erase function if it
wanted to.

This is a fixable problem!

Compared to some of the hard problems routinely discussed on this
list, this problem is very easy to fix.  Almost all of the pieces
are already in place.  For example, there is already some open-
source SSD firmware.

At the next level of detail, the problems *and* a sketch of a
solution are discussed at:
  https://www.av8n.com/security/private-data-storage.htm

Seriously:  The following efforts could be carried out in parallel,
and then joined:

   a) Work with openssd-project.org to implement secure-erase
    functionality in the firmware.

   b) Prevail upon some SD card and/or SSD vendor(s) to offer
    products that are open-source-friendly ... in analogy to
    the wireless vendors that are DD-WRT-friendly.

This is an eminently fixable problem!