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Maestro Technology Sells Used SSD Drives as New

(kozubik.com)
146 points walterbell | 3 comments | 12 Nov 25 18:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.649s | source
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p1necone ◴[12 Nov 25 18:59 UTC] No.45904405[source]▶
Can you flash fake SMART data to drives? I suspect that's exactly what Maestro will start doing now (although it's possible it's not worth the effort for the small number of customers who will actually check this stuff).
replies(1): >>45905836 #
galaxy_gas ◴[12 Nov 25 20:15 UTC] No.45905836[source]▶
Yes, most of the used Amazon SATA Rotated Drive its do this with "fresh" data.
replies(1): >>45906192 #
1. turtletontine ◴[12 Nov 25 20:33 UTC] No.45906192[source]▶
Is there any way to tell if the SMART has been reset/tampered with in any way? If you have a drive that claims to have 0 hours of use, but it quickly starts to rack up failure indicators… how can you tell if it’s spurious failures or a fraudulent tampered drive?
replies(1): >>45906441 #
2. beala ◴[12 Nov 25 20:49 UTC] No.45906441[source]▶
Seagate has a proprietary version of SMART called FARM. It’s supposed to be more tamper resistant than SMART, but it appears the fraudsters have figured out how to manipulate it too [1].

The best you can do is check FARM if available and perform a long burn-in with something like badblocks. Then compare the SMART data before and after the burn in. Checking the serial number against the manufacturers database if available is also a good precaution.

These are probably things you should be doing whether or not the drive is allegedly new.

[1] https://www.heise.de/en/news/Hard-disk-fraud-Larger-disks-wi...

replies(1): >>45908200 #
3. galaxy_gas ◴[12 Nov 25 23:09 UTC] No.45908200[source]▶
Many of this have serial number stripped out , firwmare changed in addition to it

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