3 ms·

iDevices are actually excellent at e-waste reduction precisely because of their "erase everything" feature, which gives owners a very quick and assured way to e

iDevices are actually excellent at e-waste reduction precisely because of their "erase everything" feature, which gives owners a very quick and assured way to ensure the devices are actually wiped and reduces incentives to shredding devices or parts of them.

hgsgm 4y ago
The article is about the opposite, and how can you trust that the "erase everything" works? You can't verify it without destroying the device, since the storage is not removable.
- dijit 4y ago
  The article is saying that people don't unlock their devices before recycling them. This could be true, but as I mentioned in another comment, as soon as it's removed from the original users iCloud account that lock will be removed. > how can you trust that the "erase everything" works? You can't remove it, but as long as nobody else can use the device to recover data then it's fine. FWIW it's actually pretty easy with SATA SSD's to set a device key, which then encrypts everything on the drive at full speed: https://github.com/Drive-Trust-Alliance/sedutil https://github.com/Drive-Trust-Alliance/sedutil The drives are actually already doing this, it's just that the key is set to 0's. I can imagine that, given the drive is accessed via T2, that Apples NANDS are being accessed the same way, in which case scrambling the key is enough to make it unrecoverable permanently.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    fwiw self-encrypting drives always manage to end up in a research paper every ten years where they show the crypto is catastrophically broken, the key is "md5(serialno)" and the access check turns out to be if(!strcmp(pw,...) || !strcmp(pw, "letmein").
- danaris 4y ago
  "Some institutions ignore the fact that you can safely resell these devices and just bulk-recycle everything" is not a good counterargument to the GP.

3 ms·

iDevices are actually excellent at e-waste reduction precisely because of their "erase everything" feature, which gives owners a very quick and assured way to e

by formerly_proven 4y ago

hgsgm 4y ago
The article is about the opposite, and how can you trust that the "erase everything" works? You can't verify it without destroying the device, since the storage is not removable.
- dijit 4y ago
  The article is saying that people don't unlock their devices before recycling them. This could be true, but as I mentioned in another comment, as soon as it's removed from the original users iCloud account that lock will be removed. > how can you trust that the "erase everything" works? You can't remove it, but as long as nobody else can use the device to recover data then it's fine. FWIW it's actually pretty easy with SATA SSD's to set a device key, which then encrypts everything on the drive at full speed: https://github.com/Drive-Trust-Alliance/sedutil https://github.com/Drive-Trust-Alliance/sedutil The drives are actually already doing this, it's just that the key is set to 0's. I can imagine that, given the drive is accessed via T2, that Apples NANDS are being accessed the same way, in which case scrambling the key is enough to make it unrecoverable permanently.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    fwiw self-encrypting drives always manage to end up in a research paper every ten years where they show the crypto is catastrophically broken, the key is "md5(serialno)" and the access check turns out to be if(!strcmp(pw,...) || !strcmp(pw, "letmein").
- danaris 4y ago
  "Some institutions ignore the fact that you can safely resell these devices and just bulk-recycle everything" is not a good counterargument to the GP.