[Cryptography] Data remanence on solid state storage

[Ron Garret]

> On Aug 17, 2024, at 12:18 PM, Kent Borg <kentborg at borg.org> wrote:
> 
> On 8/16/24 16:06, John-Mark Gurney wrote:
>> The
>> good manufacturers implement secure erase by simple changing the encryption
>> key making all the data unreadable.
>> 
> Bad news: Hard to know what is going on inside the solid state storage

Worse news: hard (actually impossible) to know for sure what is going on inside *any* modern electronic device.  Technology has advanced to the point where it would be trivial to put a hardware back door inside a single discrete transistor.  If it's big enough to be seen with the naked eye then it's big enough to be a security hole.  You really have no choice but to trust *someone* if you're going to use modern technology.  Even something as radical as building your own fab from scratch with your own two hands (and good luck with that) won't help because how can you be sure that no one snuck in and compromised it while you were asleep?

rg