[ale] Thermite party

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Tue, 2010-12-28 at 11:50 -0500, Greg Freemyer wrote:
> All,
> 
> Is there any interest in doing this as a group?  Maybe in March or April.
> 
> I really do have about 50 in-operative drives I need to destroy at
> some point.  If 50 dixie cups of poor man's thermite can be had for
> $100 or less, I'd be curious to try it out.  (fyi: P'tree Shredder
> will shred them for $7/ea. so $350 is my worst case cost.)
> 
> We'd need to find a large area of dirt where the fire department won't
> come shut us down I assume.

A smart move might be to check with them and get their blessing first.
Sometimes they will let you do it just to watch it themselves (they get
bored too).  Sometimes, once they've actually seen it in action they may
say never again (ask the clowns lighting charcoal with LOX).  If they
say no, I bet they will give you some really good reasons just why it's
a really bad idea.  They might say yes and give you some really good
safety tips too.

> Anyone else have a collection of drives they need to destroy?


> Is buying the chemicals going to put me on terrorist watch list?

Aluminum and iron oxide?  Probably not.  Too common of an industrial
material.  Recurse to the above, asking first would put you on the smart
person list.  High grade powdered aluminum might be another matter, but
you really don't need that.  There are sites you can buy that stuff
from, fine milled powdered aluminum used in flash powder and other
dangerous stuff, but, last I looked, you are limited to 1 lb per order
and 3 lbs per year.  And, yeah, THAT can get you talked about.


> Greg
> 
> On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 7:03 PM, Mike Harrison <cluon at geeklabs.com> wrote:
> >> with the eventual goal of physically killing them at some point.  (Is
> >> it time for a ALE thermite party?  What's that cost anyway?)
> >
> > Poors Mans Thermite; Aluminum and Iron filings with a little Magnesium Fuse..
> >
> > http://chattarati.com/neighborhoods/southside/2010/12/8/demise-vega-chrysalis/
> >
> > Note the small thermite "sparklers" at the top of the effigy, but the
> > video doesn't have the dixie cups of thermite that were along the
> > central column.
> >
> > A dixie cup of thermite on top of a hard drive should render it
> > completely slagged and unreadable.  We'll have to experiment :)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Greg Freemyer
> Head of EDD Tape Extraction and Processing team
> Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer
> CNN/TruTV Aired Forensic Imaging Demo -
>    http://insession.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/23/how-computer-evidence-gets-retrieved/
> 
> The Norcross Group
> The Intersection of Evidence & Technology
> http://www.norcrossgroup.com
> 
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-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
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