Just opening this to say how ridiculous this T-Create Expert P35S is. You most likely won’t know when someone is going to snatch the device. This company TeamGroup creates full on security theatre here. Just get yourself a hardware encrypted USB drive with duress password feature, or at least encrypt your files.
I am really awaiting a students paper whom managers to bypass the destruction as well because it requires to be connected to a computer after pressing the wipe button.
Saw this yesterday and rolled my eyes. That’s why I didn’t share it here. But yeah.. overkill for the sake of it, it seems.
Cryptomator your drives and you’re golden for the most part.
Team Group mentioned this some time ago, the only problem with it is there is absolutely zero plausibility it literally says what it is for.
You’re still better off with an encrypted NVMe enclosure like one of these and simply encrypting it with LUKS.
One could then simply say it got misplaced, six months ago and you only just found it the other day. Hitting the power button on your PC will shut it off instantly.
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I am just hoping someone will not buy it because they find our post on this bullshit product.
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Ah!
Yes, I hope so now.
That is a solid approach, better would be to use iStorage’ pro-line with brute force and tamper protection.
I can’t imagine it would sell well. It is nice to see companies trying things new, but when comes to security people usually have fairly important requirements.
It is kinda mind-blowing how many media outlets jumped on the bandwagon with this story. Almost feels like they got paid to publish on this…
Indeed, it is not even certified for anything.
It’s not particularly revolutionary, every NVMe has a secure format command built into the firmware. This is just an intermediary button that triggers that instead of nvme format etc.
The issue is that the sorts of people that might think they need this, also likely have adversaries that will use it’s existence to justify a person was guilty/doing something bad.
Encryption harder to make that argument because people can say that is to stop unauthorized access perhaps from someone who stole the equipment. It’s also default in a lot of cases, Windows, MacOS, in Linux installers etc.
You totally know law enforcement will say this device shows premeditation.
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I would not be surprised. But also shows how lacking are the thinking skills of these publications who consider themselves serious tech journalists - that they could not evaluate this product better (and differently).
Isn’t plausible deniability a legitimate argument anymore? What happened to definite proof and not relying only on metadata.
I should note they have an implementation that physically destroys the NAND flash. Again there’s zero plausibility there.
Its about perception, and there’s many “law enforcement” agencies that do not really care about definite proof only what it looks like. It really depends on what it is you’re trying to hide, and who you’re trying to hide it from.
I cannot think of too many situations where such a serious solution is needed where the stakes are not extremely high, eg where the law doesn’t actually matter anymore.
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Yes but I also meant for if and when these issues go to the courts.. surely the law is still the law.
Yes and they will say to the courts that because this device is present you tried to thwart law enforcement and obviously there was further offending (whatever that may be).
If they’re making that argument then they probably have something else to bring to the court so it will just mean the judge will judge you more harshly on what they do have.
But the obvious counter is that if such is the case, the device/product should not be legal to for sale in the first place. Just because I buy a kitchen knife doesn’t mean it is to kill someone.
Lots of things are legal for sale, but they can argue you used specialized knowledge/did research to further hide whatever it is you’re trying to hide.
That’s also used for completely innocent things like making sandwiches.
A better example would be firearms, or explosive claymores set around your house.
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Yeah. Also, depends on your country, law, etc. Too many variables to conclusively say or claim anything.
It does, and you’re right about that however its worth noting a lot of people do have higher confidence in their judicial systems than they perhaps should. (This also includes countries which are considered to have strong protections).
People also often assume is that all convictions contain occur because of physical irrefutable evidence exists. It is usually paired with statements such as “beyond all reasonable doubt” etc. Media organizations often are complicit in this to some extent by stating certain things as fact because “a court found” etc. It’s all in the language.
Sometimes though the evidence can be circumstantial evidence and it may be harder for a defence council to argue with items like this present you weren’t up to something else.