$62 SanDisk Memory Card Found Intact At Titan Wreck Site (techspot.com)
- Reference: 0179838198
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/10/20/2155249/62-sandisk-memory-card-found-intact-at-titan-wreck-site
- Source link: https://www.techspot.com/news/109921-oceangate-titan-sub-camera-found-mostly-intact-sandisk.html
> Scott Manley, the science communication YouTuber, gamer, astrophysicist, and programmer, [3]posted about the latest find: a hardened SubC-branded Rayfin Mk2 Benthic Camera containing the undamaged SD card. The titanium and synthetic sapphire crystal camera is rated to withstand depths of up to 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) -- the Titan imploded at around 3,300 meters (10,827 feet). The casing is intact, though the lens is shattered and the PCBs are slightly damaged.
>
> Incredibly the SD card inside the camera was undamaged. Tom's Hardware [4]reports that it's almost certainly a SanDisk Extreme Pro 512GB, which costs around $62 on Amazon. The camera's SD card was found to be fully encrypted, divided into a small partition for operating system updates and a larger one for user data. Due to impact damage from the accident, several components of the system-on-module (SOM) board -- including connectors and the microcontroller -- were broken, complicating the data extraction process. [...] After determining the data wasn't encrypted beyond the file system level, they successfully accessed the SD card contents using the manufacturer's proprietary equipment and procedures.
[1] https://www.techspot.com/news/109921-oceangate-titan-sub-camera-found-mostly-intact-sandisk.html
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/06/22/1911238/oceangate-says-all-five-titan-passengers-have-died
[3] https://x.com/DJSnM/status/1978569771789467981
[4] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/microsd-cards/tragic-oceangate-titan-submersibles-usd62-sandisk-memory-card-found-undamaged-at-wreckage-site-12-stills-and-nine-videos-have-been-recovered-but-none-from-the-fateful-implosion
None of the videos were relevant to the accident (Score:2)
TFA says the videos were some sort of test before dive; during dive the camera was configured for external acquisition, not for dump to SD.
Nothing useful found (Score:4, Informative)
Having watched the video, this camera was only used for streaming, so the card only contained test images and videos from above the surface.
Not very interesting (Score:4, Informative)
FTA:
> Manley writes that "the camera had been configured to dump data onto an external storage device, so nothing was found from the accident dive."
The data was unreadable (Score:2, Funny)
Until they used a decompression utility on it.
Re: The data was unreadable (Score:1)
Now now. People died. Quite gruesomely at that. For what turned out to be someone's stupidity, true. But still.
It was protected (Score:5, Informative)
The SD card was inside of a camera rated for the depth it was at. The camera looks like a thermos with inch-thick walls. The camera housing was dinged up by being adjacent to the sub's implosion, but did not implode itself. The energy of the nearby implosion ripped components off of the camera's PCB, but didn't harm the SD card. This makes sense, because the SD card is light and compact.
The sub's computer bay was a much different story. It was filled with air and when it imploded, everything inside was charred and crushed into a lump that mangled every PCB and cracked every chip with more than a few pins. They specifically looked at the PCBs of the SSDs, hoping to find some data, but those PCBs looked like crumpled up paper. I think the report called it, eloquently, "distorted on all axes"
A diesel engine runs at 14:1 up to 25:1 compression, and the heat of this compression is literally what ignites the fuel. The computer bay implosion was more like 400:1, which superheated all surfaces, but only for a few microseconds.
Said another way (Score:3)
> After determining the data wasn't encrypted beyond the file system level, they successfully accessed the SD card contents using the manufacturer's proprietary equipment and procedures.
the manufacturer had the decryption key.
Why does this story not make me feel all warm and fuzzy?
Advertisement to be released shortly... (Score:2)
If SanDisk has any brains at all, they will be advertising the hell out of this. Just copy the format for an old Timex watch:
"Takes an implosion and keeps on filming."
Same for the Rayfin Benthic subsea camera, though the destroyed lens and damaged PCBs makes it a harder sell.
Re: (Score:2)
Should they advertise they have a backdoor to the encryption?
so it wasn't really encrypted (Score:2)
if the manufacturer had a backdoor
and a $29.99 gaming controller! (Score:4, Funny)
and a $29.99 gaming controller!