Ultra Slim Drives – A New Challenge For Computer Forensics

Seagate ultra slim drive is the newest generation of portable hard drives. Its very thin design, at just 9.6mm, a relatively large storage area, going up to 2TB, and a fast data transfer maximum of 120MB/s make it one of the most popular portable drives today.

Alongside the new Seagate drive is also the Western Digital ultra slim drive. This is an even thinner drive, with 5mm thickness it lives up to the name ultra slim.

These drives can have a storage up to 2TB, the same as Seagate, its RPM is 5400, which is very high considering the size of the drive, and it can operate in the temperature interval of 0° C to 60° C.However, the motivation to put all of the usual components of a hard drive in such a small place created certain problems for forensic and data recovery experts.

The shortage of free space and miniature dimensions make it hard to operate inside of the drive. This lead to the inability of performing a standard head removal procedure, which was a huge problem.

HDD Surgery team studied the new Seagate ultra slim and WD slim design and came up with a solution in form of the Sea 2.5'' slim set and a WD 2.5'' Slim set. The sets were perfected and released in the end of May, 2017.


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They contain two pairs of tools, for single plate drives and for drives with 2 plates. Tools are designed to fit into the small space of the drive and lift and secure the heads so they could be removed, studied or replaced.

Since their release, the Sea 2.5'' Slim set and WD 2.5'' Slim set grew in popularity immensely.

Both forensic experts and data recovery professionals find that the elegant and easy-to use tools are the perfect solution for the difficulties that the new ultra slim drives bring.

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Latest Videos

In this episode of the Forensic Focus podcast, Desi and Si discuss different online programming courses and what they think about the popular platform, Udemy. They also talk about Flipper, Dev boards, and Raspberry Pi, and delve into the fascinating phenomenon of running the classic game Doom on unlikely devices.

Throughout the episode, Desi and Si share their digital forensics expertise, referencing some of the cases they have been working on and highlighting particular methodologies and technologies that have an impact on cybersecurity.

Show Notes:

100 Days of Code: The Complete Python Pro Bootcamp for 2023 - https://www.udemy.com/course/100-days-of-code/

Domestika - https://www.domestika.org/en

MIT OpenCourseWare - https://www.youtube.com/@mitocw 

MasterClass - https://www.masterclass.com/

Raspberry Pi 400 Complete Kit - https://core-electronics.com.au/raspberry-pi-400-kit.html

Flipper Discord - https://discord.com/invite/flipper

Flipper Zero - https://flipperzero.one/

This Programmer Figured Out How to Play Doom on a Pregnancy Test - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a33957256/this-programmer-figured-out-how-to-play-doom-on-a-pregnancy-test/

Here’s a dude playing Doom Eternal on his fridge - https://www.polygon.com/2020/10/13/21514933/doom-eternal-refrigerator-door-samsung-smart-refrigerator-xbox-game-pass-richard-mallard

Doom hacker gets Doom running in Doom - https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-hacker-gets-doom-running-in-doom/

Doom Running On A Calculator Powered By Old Potatoes - https://kotaku.com/doom-running-on-a-calculator-powered-by-old-potatoes-1845374069

GoldenEra - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11753760/

Racing the Beam - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam

High Score (TV series) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Score_(TV_series)

Microcontroller Courses (Udemy) - https://www.udemy.com/topic/microcontroller/

The story of Final Fantasy XIV’s renegade do-good modders - https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fantasy-xiv/ffxiv-modders-renegade-do-gooders

Logical fallacies - https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

In this episode of the Forensic Focus podcast, Desi and Si discuss different online programming courses and what they think about the popular platform, Udemy. They also talk about Flipper, Dev boards, and Raspberry Pi, and delve into the fascinating phenomenon of running the classic game Doom on unlikely devices.

Throughout the episode, Desi and Si share their digital forensics expertise, referencing some of the cases they have been working on and highlighting particular methodologies and technologies that have an impact on cybersecurity.

Show Notes:

100 Days of Code: The Complete Python Pro Bootcamp for 2023 - https://www.udemy.com/course/100-days-of-code/

Domestika - https://www.domestika.org/en

MIT OpenCourseWare - https://www.youtube.com/@mitocw

MasterClass - https://www.masterclass.com/

Raspberry Pi 400 Complete Kit - https://core-electronics.com.au/raspberry-pi-400-kit.html

Flipper Discord - https://discord.com/invite/flipper

Flipper Zero - https://flipperzero.one/

This Programmer Figured Out How to Play Doom on a Pregnancy Test - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a33957256/this-programmer-figured-out-how-to-play-doom-on-a-pregnancy-test/

Here’s a dude playing Doom Eternal on his fridge - https://www.polygon.com/2020/10/13/21514933/doom-eternal-refrigerator-door-samsung-smart-refrigerator-xbox-game-pass-richard-mallard

Doom hacker gets Doom running in Doom - https://www.pcgamer.com/doom-hacker-gets-doom-running-in-doom/

Doom Running On A Calculator Powered By Old Potatoes - https://kotaku.com/doom-running-on-a-calculator-powered-by-old-potatoes-1845374069

GoldenEra - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11753760/

Racing the Beam - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam

High Score (TV series) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Score_(TV_series)

Microcontroller Courses (Udemy) - https://www.udemy.com/topic/microcontroller/

The story of Final Fantasy XIV’s renegade do-good modders - https://www.pcgamesn.com/final-fantasy-xiv/ffxiv-modders-renegade-do-gooders

Logical fallacies - https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

YouTube Video UCQajlJPesqmyWJDN52AZI4Q_5f72B6DD5wk

Programming Languages, Flipper And Gaming

Forensic Focus 24th May 2023 11:43 am

In this episode of the Forensic Focus podcast, Si and Desi talk to Mackenzie Jackson, Developer Advocate at Git Guardian. 

Mackenzie discusses the problem of hard-coded and leaked credentials in Git repositories, the task of scanning Git repositories for leaked credentials, and how that’s helped by the setup of GitHub and Git. 

He also looks at some public and private cases of security breaches through Git repositories and recommends tools you can use to combat attackers on Git. 

Show Notes:

Toyota Suffered a Data Breach by Accidentally Exposing A Secret Key Publicly On GitHub (GitGuardian) - https://blog.gitguardian.com/toyota-accidently-exposed-a-secret-key-publicly-on-github-for-five-years/

GitHub.com rotates its exposed private SSH key (Bleeping Computer) - https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/githubcom-rotates-its-exposed-private-ssh-key/

Conpago - https://www.conpago.com.au/

Source Code as a Vulnerability - A Deep Dive into the Real Security Threats From the Twitch Leak (GitGuardian) - https://blog.gitguardian.com/security-threats-from-the-twitch-leak/

Teenagers Leveraging Insider Threats: Lapsus$ Hacker Group (Forbes) - https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilsayegh/2023/03/15/teenagers-leveraging-insider-threats-lapsus-hacker-group

Lapsus$: Oxford teen accused of being multi-millionaire cyber-criminal (BBC) - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-60864283

Dynamic Secrets (HashiCorp) - https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/tutorials/getting-started/getting-started-dynamic-secrets

Crappy code, crappy Copilot. GitHub Copilot is writing vulnerable code and it could be your fault (GitGuardian) - https://blog.gitguardian.com/crappy-code-crappy-copilot/

trufflesecurity/trufflehog (GitHub) - https://github.com/trufflesecurity/trufflehog

gitleaks/gitleaks (GitHub) - https://github.com/gitleaks/gitleaks

Git (Wikipedia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git

awslabs/git-secrets (GitHub) - https://github.com/awslabs/git-secrets

In this episode of the Forensic Focus podcast, Si and Desi talk to Mackenzie Jackson, Developer Advocate at Git Guardian.

Mackenzie discusses the problem of hard-coded and leaked credentials in Git repositories, the task of scanning Git repositories for leaked credentials, and how that’s helped by the setup of GitHub and Git.

He also looks at some public and private cases of security breaches through Git repositories and recommends tools you can use to combat attackers on Git.

Show Notes:

Toyota Suffered a Data Breach by Accidentally Exposing A Secret Key Publicly On GitHub (GitGuardian) - https://blog.gitguardian.com/toyota-accidently-exposed-a-secret-key-publicly-on-github-for-five-years/

GitHub.com rotates its exposed private SSH key (Bleeping Computer) - https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/githubcom-rotates-its-exposed-private-ssh-key/

Conpago - https://www.conpago.com.au/

Source Code as a Vulnerability - A Deep Dive into the Real Security Threats From the Twitch Leak (GitGuardian) - https://blog.gitguardian.com/security-threats-from-the-twitch-leak/

Teenagers Leveraging Insider Threats: Lapsus$ Hacker Group (Forbes) - https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilsayegh/2023/03/15/teenagers-leveraging-insider-threats-lapsus-hacker-group

Lapsus$: Oxford teen accused of being multi-millionaire cyber-criminal (BBC) - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-60864283

Dynamic Secrets (HashiCorp) - https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/tutorials/getting-started/getting-started-dynamic-secrets

Crappy code, crappy Copilot. GitHub Copilot is writing vulnerable code and it could be your fault (GitGuardian) - https://blog.gitguardian.com/crappy-code-crappy-copilot/

trufflesecurity/trufflehog (GitHub) - https://github.com/trufflesecurity/trufflehog

gitleaks/gitleaks (GitHub) - https://github.com/gitleaks/gitleaks

Git (Wikipedia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git

awslabs/git-secrets (GitHub) - https://github.com/awslabs/git-secrets

YouTube Video UCQajlJPesqmyWJDN52AZI4Q_BX15Z_xF8mA

Preventing Data Leaks With Git Guardian

Forensic Focus 3rd May 2023 11:07 am

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