Titan submersible’s $62 SanDisk memory card found undamaged at wreckage site
(tomshardware.com)95 points by WithinReason 2 days ago
95 points by WithinReason 2 days ago
Does not leave SubC in a particularly flattering light...
I see a lot of discussion in this thread stemming from some confusion+not reading the actual report[0].
Some key points:
1. The Camera+Card was encased in a separate enclosure made of titanium+sapphire, and did not seem to be exposed to extreme pressures.
2. The encryption was done via a variant of LUKS/dm-crypt, with the key stored on the ARM TrustZone NVRAM of a chip.
3. The recovery was done by transplanting the original chip onto a new working board. No manufacturer backdoors or other hidden mechanisms were used.
4. Interestingly, the camera vendor didn't seem to realize there was any encryption at all.
[0] https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/Document/docBLOB?ID=18741602&Fi...
also basically if enough companies agrees on helping the cause your crypto secrets are quite more likely to be exposed...
The NTSB report noted that if the TrustZone secure enclave system was being used, then yeah this data would be toast.
But it speaks more to Oceangstrs negligence that this situation even existed: why wasn't any potential encryption keys escrowed ashore to ensure they could be recovered later? This shouldn't have even been an issue.
Since not everyone reads articles:
> Somewhat disappointingly, the images and videos shared in the report were taken in the vicinity of the ROV shop at the Marine Institute, also in Newfoundland. The location was the logistical base for Titanic dive missions. No deep-sea shenanigans around the Titanic wreck were revealed.
It continues to amaze me how indestructible SDCards are.
It's a solid piece of silicon encased in epoxy, so there's nothing really to get crushed. Contrast this to something like a cellphone that's made of hundreds of separate parts and has void space that will get crushed.
This comment made me wonder how much easier proximity fuzes would have been to develop in WW2 had they had transistors (or integrated circuits). I assume making modern solid state electronics 20,000g shock resistant is much easier than doing the same to vacuum tubes.
No need to wonder, proximity fuzes are still used today. And yes, they are much smaller, cheaper, more reliable, and precise.
> Why isn't a cellphone filled with epoxy?
How would you do screen replacement? That is a common repair since people drop their phones and currently you can get your phone repaired by some teenager in a booth at the mall. If you fill the phone with epoxy, how are you detaching the screen, and getting a new ribbon cable through the epoxy?
I'm sure there are some companies who want to do that, as long as they can convince people it's better for security or something.
When was the last time your phone stopped working due mechanical PCB damage?
Typically the limiting factor on your phone is the screen breaking, your battery life getting too short, wear and tear on components like buttons or the charging port, and factory defects. Epoxy isn't going to help with any of those. The only thing it would help with is exposure to water, but if other parts of your phone like your screen aren't water proof, what's the point?
Epoxy adds weight and manufacturing cost. It introduces design challenges as you need to balance the thermal expansion of the various parts. It's an extra step that can go wrong, and makes repair of other defects far more difficult. What benefit is there for the typical consumer that outweighs these costs?
It wasn't in the crushed part, it was in the camera's shell, and the camera was mounted outside, if I understood properly.
The picture looks like the camera + storage SD card were in a sealed metal tube that was untouched.
Heat and wear are the greatest dangers to flash memory, and this was found in a cold dark place, with presumably plenty of life remaining.
It continues to amaze me how indestructible SDCards are.
Until they're sold as supplemental hard drives (cough Transcend Jetdrive cough). Then they'll fail if you even look at them strangely.
It also amazes me how incredibly unbrowseable tomshardware is now with all the ads and pop-ups.
Yes because external storage is much larger, and theres nothing more annoying than being in the middle of doing some science with 30 other bits of complex equipment, and then the camera stops working with storage full errors and youre 7000m underwater in a cramped sub trying to navigate a camera UI to find the setting.
Configure your systems so they are in the configuration that is less likely to cause random disruption in the field.
Which makes me wonder why they bother with the SD card at all. What was it meant to be storing? If it is not intended to be the real storage area, why not just have it in a loop, constantly over-writing the oldest material?
They probably used it for testing only, hence why it had irrelevant footage.
They might have forgot to remove or just didn't care.
The NTSB's original report has more detail on how the SD Card was encrypted and how the NTSB managed to decrypt it:
https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket/Document/docBLOB?ID=18741602&Fi...