$62 SanDisk Memory Card Found Intact At Titan Wreck Site (techspot.com) 67
Investigators recovered the OceanGate Titan sub's underwater camera nearly intact, discovering a SanDisk SD card that survived the 2023 implosion and still contained 12 images and 9 videos. TechSpot reports: Scott Manley, the science communication YouTuber, gamer, astrophysicist, and programmer, 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 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.
Incredibly the SD card inside the camera was undamaged. Tom's Hardware 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.
and a $29.99 gaming controller! (Score:5, Funny)
and a $29.99 gaming controller!
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Yep, it is very important to know if the logitech controller survived it or not
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Perfectly worded. I'm still laughing ... thank you.
None of the videos were relevant to the accident (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:None of the videos were relevant to the acciden (Score:4, Informative)
no, it wasn't porn.
The camera, which as pointed out was not mounted inside of the craft's hull but was itself independently rated to extreme pressures, was mounted on the outside. The camera suffered damage regardless as the forces of the craft imploding appear to have shoved or tugged on the camera so hard that the internals saw surface-mount components break off of PCBs, but no additional pressure from the depths entered the housing.
The card survived by virtue of being within a package that was solid enough to keep the interior stable, but flexible enough that it didn't crack like silicon chips or solder joints did.
As for the contents, it sounds like there were only pictures and videos that were from prior use of the camera because something software-wise was not configured completely right, and data that should have been copied-off to remote mount points was left on the local filesystem instead. That's why there was nothing useful on the card.
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No it was an MP4 of Titanic . They watched it during the long boring descent.
Nothing useful found (Score:5, 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.
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What "useful" would you expect from a badly engineered wreck that was widely expected to fail exactly as it did?
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If the camera had been recording and locally-storing video when the vehicle imploded then it possibly would have been useful. Even that would be a stretch, as it's unlikely that it would be recording the hull itself, but it wasn't wrong of investigators to try to check.
Not very interesting (Score:5, 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:5, Funny)
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I hope I die that quickly and painlessly.
Re: The data was unreadable (Score:3, Funny)
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People died. Quite gruesomely at that. For what turned out to be someone's stupidity, true.
No, for everyone's stupidity. Everyone involved including every passenger was an idiot. The only one who deserves any sympathy was the teen whose father pressured him into it, when he knew it was a bad idea and didn't want to go. Rush has been well known to be dismissive about safety concerns and random people on the internet knew that the hull wasn't fit for purpose and the main window wasn't rated for the depth. If you're getting into an experimental submarine without knowing more about it than people who
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Wow. That's quite the blanket statement.
Do you need your comfort blanket, bootlicker?
Are you a killer? You're the reason Democrats hate guns, they know their own people are mentally unstable and liable to shoot up schools, businesses, and such.
Gun violence is an overwhelmingly reich wing phenomenon.
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> Link, please...
"assessing the differences between far-left and far-right ideologically motivated fatal violence between 1990 and 2020. Results indicate over the past three decades the overall prevalence and deadliness of far-right extremism far outweighs that of the far-left, even though far-left violence has increased over the last five years. The implications of these results and corresponding policy suggestions are discussed. Results indicate over the past three decades the overall prevalence and de
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Thanks for the assist. I really loved how you included Mechahitler's supporting comment, even a literal bot knows better than that meat bot.
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Yeah, and North Korea is a Democracy. Fuck off, Nazi.
Complete sidestep, no refutation of statistics at all. Check. Call objectioner a name. Check.
All that sweet Humboldt green bud around you, and you choose violence. Go have another bong hit. You seem to need it.
Re: The data was unreadable (Score:2)
What you said was idiotic and no one owes you anything for being an idiot.
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What you said was idiotic and no one owes you anything for being an idiot.
More name calling...
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More name calling...
bubububububu
Cry more, bootlicker.
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Wow -
So because someone happens to be winning life's lottery for the moment, they deserve to be killed...
This is the folks is the prevailing thinking on the left. You don't have to do anything, have done any specific harm to anyone. if you have more than they do and are doing anything other then using it to mobilize against anyone else who also happens to have more than them you are target!
If you disagree with them on what is good for people or what love or agÃpi mean, you also automatically deserve d
Re: The data was unreadable (Score:2)
"So because someone happens to be winning life's lottery for the moment, they deserve to be killed..."
They volunteered to die in an experiment in stupidity, no one killed them. Suck billionaire cock if you like but don't expect to be rewarded.
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I didn't take it that they deserved to be killed, but that it was taken as amusing when someone who is held-up on a pedestal as being so great/successful to the point that they start to believe it themselves dies as a result of their own choices.
When people learn of Thomas Midgley Jr as the engineer that invented both CFCs and leaded gasoline, who later died as a result of his final invention, a system of cables, pulleys, and slings that were supposed to give him some additional able-bodiedness after he'd c
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.
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If only the sub had been as well-engineered.
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Well, SD cards are basically a solid lump of plastic with metal contacts. That's what makes them exceptionally rugged because all the bits are suspended in a plastic/resin enclosure
As for the computers, the SSD data could be recoverable - chip-off data recovery is a thing. Basically you desolder the NAND chips, then use a rig to image them onto the PC.
The PC software then reconstructs the SSD data using the controller algorithms and data tables and rebuilding the mapping tables.
It does require the NAND be i
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Some of the NAND chips were ripped off and were not found. The ones that weren't ripped off were shattered - cracks in multiple directions. The dies inside were almost certainly exposed to sea water.
Exposed to sea water, the cells probably lost all charge very rapidly.
I had been hoping that someone would have made the attempt anyway. I'd have liked to read that report.
Wandering off topic a bit ... (Score:2)
Imagine the fusing electronics inside an artillery shell and the forces that sustains. Now imagine those fusing electronics built with vacuum tubes ...
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An artillery shell is subjected to one acceleration along a single axis of propulsion. It is a big acceleration, but not that big, and you mostly just need to organize the parts such that everything is supported along that axis.
Dealing with an implosion is different. Water with the density of concrete, moving around the speed of sound, bouncing everywhere and coming from all directions.
The SSDs look like someone put them in a pillowcase and beat them with hammers.
Said another way (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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Sort of. The manufacturer used a 3rd party component that handled the full disk encryption and the key had to be extracted from the firmware of the device. It was quite a lot of work but unfortunately didn't result in any new data
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Actually they didn't have the key. It was in a flash chip on the computer board that had to be removed and placed in a working camera from the manufacturer and then it was able to read the card. It's beyond me why they felt the need to run a fully encrypted file system on an SD card inside of a hermetically sealed camera unit that would normally never be opened by any customer. Companies have strange ideas about preserving their trade secrets I guess. Like instrument makers that require hardware keys for
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It's even worse: the encrypted SD card can be decrypted by anybody who owns the same device. Meaning practically, it's not encrypted at all.
Re:Said another way (Score:5, Informative)
No that's not correct. The key is generated and burned into the firmware. Scott Manley covered that in depth. They had to recover the flash chip from the wrecked camera as well as the SD card.
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Surely a million dollar instrument is a good enough hardware key!
No. Because that's a $5000 Chinese instrument running your firmware.
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If you aren't dealing with the hassle of key management, you shouldn't consider your data encrypted.
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.
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Should they advertise they have a backdoor to the encryption?
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Wait what? Where did you get that from? The SD card was encrypted with luks and the computer ran Linux.
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He is talking about how when the chip was damaged, SanDisk managed to access the data.
Re:Advertisement to be released shortly... (Score:4, Informative)
SanDisk didn't access the data. The camera maker told them which Flash chip in the camera contained the keys, so they could transplant that chip as well as the SD card into a working camera and then access the data. You need the matching encrypted SD card and Flash chip, or you can't access the data.
so it wasn't really encrypted (Score:2)
if the manufacturer had a backdoor
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They didn't. It was all in the camera firmware. But encrypting it at all is kind of silly.
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I can confirm this is true! (Score:4, Informative)
I design full ocean depth (6000 meters) electronics. Getting rid of the titanium pressure vessels is a huge savings in cost and galvanic risk.
I have personally used this same SanDisk SD card at full pressure (10000 psi) inside an oil filled bladder for read/writes, as well as potted in polyurethane. Never saw any data issues.
When we proved it we thought it was cool, but didn't realize it was newsworthy. Most ICs do fine at full pressure. The only ones that fail have air voids in yhem. Like crystals, or MEMS sensors.
Re: I can confirm this is true! (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry: you have ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE about the domain being discussed.
Thus you're not allowed to post on /.
Re: I can confirm this is true! (Score:5, Insightful)
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If only they'd hired you to design the main computer for the sub, eh? We might have been watching the 'cockpit recorder' and analysing telemetry instead of nothing much.
Found SD card, nothing new....eyeroll. (Score:2)
Final statement in video (Score:1)
"Uh no, it's not supposed to make that s
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"Uh no, it's not supposed to make that s
Yes I think everyone was hoping for a selfie of Stockton's shocked face, but no such luck.
So SanDisk encryption has a back door? (Score:2)
That's what I got from this.
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