Exploding chips could foil laptop thieves
A new way of making silicon explode could mean anyone trying to use a stolen laptop or mobile will be confronted by this message: “This machine is stolen and will self-destruct in ten seconds … “.
Until now scientists have only managed to make silicon go bang by mixing it with either liquid oxygen or nitric acid. But Michael Sailor and his colleagues at the University of California in San Diego have found a way to blow up silicon chips using an electrical signal.
They say their method could be used to fry circuitry in devices that fall into the wrong hands. For instance, the American spy plane impounded by China last year could have used it to destroy its secret electronics systems.
Sailor’s team hit upon this new way of exploding silicon when they applied the oxidising chemical gadolinium nitrate to a porous silicon wafer. As colleague Fred Mikulec used a diamond scribe to split the wafer it blew up in his face, giving Mikulec the shock of his life. Luckily, only a minute quantity of silicon was involved so it was a small bang. “It’s a bit like a cap in a cap gun going off,” says Sailor.
In a stolen mobile phone, the network would send a trigger signal to the part of the chip containing the gadolinium nitrate “detonator”, triggering the explosion. “We have shown that you can store this stuff and detonate it at will,” says Sailor.
Other applications suggested for the technology include testing for toxic substances in groundwater. The device could be used on the spot to burn minute samples on a disposable chip and analyse their chemical composition. Alternatively, it could be used as a fuel supply for microscopic machines etched onto silicon wafers, says Sailor.
Porous silicon-based explosive PATENT
US 7942989 B2
Until now scientists have only managed to make silicon go bang by mixing it with either liquid oxygen or nitric acid. But Michael Sailor and his colleagues at the University of California in San Diego have found a way to blow up silicon chips using an electrical signal.
They say their method could be used to fry circuitry in devices that fall into the wrong hands. For instance, the American spy plane impounded by China last year could have used it to destroy its secret electronics systems.
Sailor’s team hit upon this new way of exploding silicon when they applied the oxidising chemical gadolinium nitrate to a porous silicon wafer. As colleague Fred Mikulec used a diamond scribe to split the wafer it blew up in his face, giving Mikulec the shock of his life. Luckily, only a minute quantity of silicon was involved so it was a small bang. “It’s a bit like a cap in a cap gun going off,” says Sailor.
Fast burn
The gadolinium nitrate used the energy from the diamond scribe to oxidise the silicon fuel, which burns fast because its crystals have a large surface area. “The faster the burn, the bigger the bang,” explains Sailor. You would only need a tiny quantity of the chemical to do irreparable damage to delicate transistors, so it would be cheap and easy to add when the chips are being made.In a stolen mobile phone, the network would send a trigger signal to the part of the chip containing the gadolinium nitrate “detonator”, triggering the explosion. “We have shown that you can store this stuff and detonate it at will,” says Sailor.
Other applications suggested for the technology include testing for toxic substances in groundwater. The device could be used on the spot to burn minute samples on a disposable chip and analyse their chemical composition. Alternatively, it could be used as a fuel supply for microscopic machines etched onto silicon wafers, says Sailor.
Journal reference: Advanced Materials (vol 14, p 38)
US 7942989 B2
Resumo
An initiator explosive for detonating a second explosive that includes nanocrystalline silicon containing a plurality of pores and a solid state oxidant disposed within said pores.
CHANGE THE BIOS FOR THE MOBILE OPERATOR CAN'T MODIFY THE DETONATOR TIME
Create a USB Boot CD that can be used to boot Xubuntu 9.04 from USB flash drive on computers using a system BIOS that does not natively support booting from USB. The boot CD works by loading the initrd and vmlinuz kernel from the CD. Once the necessary USB drivers have been loaded, the boot CD proceeds to locate and load the filesystem from the USB flash drive. Because the USB driver modules are preloaded from the CD, the compressed filesystem can then be detected and loaded from the USB device even if your system BIOS does not support booting from USB.
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Make a USB Boot CD for Kubuntu 9.04
This tutorial explains how to create a USB Boot CD that can be used to boot Kubuntu 9.04 from a USB flash drive on computers utilizing a system BIOS that does not natively support booting from USB. Kubuntu is a derivative of Ubuntu that uses the KDE desktop environment instead of Gnome. The USB boot CD created using this tutorial launches the initrd and vmlinuz kernel from the CD along with the necessary USB drivers, and then proceeds to locate the filesystem on the USB drive. Because the USB driver modules are preloaded from the initrd on the CD, the compressed filesystem can then be detected and loaded from the USB device.
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Make a USB Boot CD for Kubuntu 8.10
This USB Boot CD can be used to boot Kubuntu 8.10 from a USB flash drive on computers with a BIOS that does not support booting from USB (including the Apple Mac, Macbook and, Macbook Pro). Kubuntu is a derivative of Ubuntu that uses the KDE desktop environment instead of Gnome. This boot CD loads the initrd and vmlinuz kernel from the CD and then loads the necessary USB drivers, proceeding to locate and extract the filesystem from the USB flash drive.
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Read the rest of this entry…
Make a USB Boot CD for Xubuntu 8.10
Much like a USB Boot CD that can be used to boot Ubuntu 8.10 from USB, this USB Boot CD can be used to boot a prepared Xubuntu 8.10 USB flash drive on computers containing a system BIOS that does not natively support booting from USB. The boot CD works by loading the initrd and vmlinuz kernel from the CD. Once the necessary USB drivers have been loaded, the boot CD proceeds to locate and load the filesystem from the USB flash drive.
Read the rest of this entry…
Read the rest of this entry…
Make a USB Boot CD for Ubuntu 8.10
This USB Boot CD can be used to boot a Ubuntu 8.10 USB flash drive on computers with a BIOS that does not natively support booting from USB. The boot CD contains a grub bootloader that loads the initrd and vmlinuz kernel from the CD and then proceeds to locate the filesystem on the USB flash drive. Because the USB drivers are preloaded from the initrd on the CD, the USB flash drive can then easily be detected.
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How to Access BIOS
How to Access BIOS. Computer and motherboard manufacturers and BIOS suppliers may use varying keyboard keys or key combinations that can be pressed during system post to access your system BIOS. Unfortunately there is no standard method to universally access or enter a motherboard BIOS. The following is a list of some popular BIOS suppliers, Computer Vendors and the keyboard key combinations that have been known to work with them.
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Booting Linux using USB-ZIP on older systems
If you have an older computer system, your BIOS might not support USB-HDD boot. In this case, it may still be possible to boot Linux from USB if your BIOS does list USB-ZIP as a boot option. In order for this to happen, we need to trick the BIOS into thinking that the USB flash drive is a zip drive.
We can trick the BIOS by modifying the number of heads and sectors being displayed from the USB flash device to match that of a zip drive. Then we partition the drive using partition 4 (the partition that zip drives typically use). For this tutorial we will use the mkdiskimage application that comes with syslinux.
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http://www.pendrivelinux.com/tag/bios/
Having the correct balance of fuel and oxidizer is key to having a stable burn in a thermite reaction. The thermite recipe for red iron oxide and aluminum is 3 parts iron oxide red to 1 part aluminum fuel. In pyrotechnic compositions the finer the ingredients and more well mixed they are, generally the easier it is to ignite, and the faster the reaction will progress.
So our goals in selecting thermite ingredients are ease of ignition and a stable, non-explosive burn.
For this example, we are using Skylighter's -325 mesh red iron oxide and Skylighter's -325 mesh bright aluminum, which has an average particle size of 45 microns.
Thermite#1 Mixture
To make a 4 ounce batch of thermite, first weigh out 3 ounces of red iron oxide. Then weigh out 1 ounce of aluminum powder. Dump them into a plastic tub, and put the top on. Shake them until the color is consistent throughout.
Then pass the mix through a 10-mesh or finer screen. If there are any clumps break them up with your fingers. Screen the mix two more times, or more, until you have a uniformly colored powder.
This can be a dusty process, so be sure and do it an area where the aluminum dust will not cause a problem. Do not try this where air is moving. The better you mix the ingredient, the faster and hotter the reaction will be. Thermite needs a very high temperature to ignite it.
Your thermite kit comes with 6 gold sparklers. The iron in them burns at around 1800 degrees F.
Here's how to use sparklers to ignite your thermite. Place your thermite mix in a plastic tub. Make a hole near the bottom on the side of the tub big enough for a sparkler to go through.
Push 1 to 2 of inches of the sparkler through the hole in the side of the tub into the mix inside. Leave at least 2-3 inches of your sparkler sticking out. Place the plastic tub on a metal surface that want to burn through. Light the sparkler, and get back 40 or 50 feet.
WARNING: Do NOT attempt to ignite your thermite by dipping your sparkler into the mix by hand. The mix can and does ignite violently, and will spray you with burning metal.
WARNING: A violent ignition of thermite can throw molten metal in all directions. Do not stand close to the mix when it is igniting or burning.
TIP: If you have trouble igniting your thermite with a sparkler, try mixing some magnesium powder or chips into a small amount of thermite mix. Then you should be able to ignite the magnesium mix using your sparkler.
WARNING: Thermite burns extremely hot and produces molten iron slag that can melt though a car's engine block! Burning thermite can spatter molten iron a long way from the burning pile. Stay as far back as you can. And make sure there is nothing nearby that can catch fire. Start your thermite experiments with small amounts at first, until you understand how it behaves, and how far it will throw molten metal slag.
WARNING: You cannot extinguish a thermite fire with water. Do not attempt to put the fire out with water, or you may have a violent, steam explosion, which can throw molten slag as well. Likewise, do not use any wet materials to attempt to extinguish the fire.
http://www.skylighter.com/fireworks/how-to-make/Thermite.asp
FOR SALE SEARCH FOR THE CAS NUMBER:
Metal Nano Powder
We can trick the BIOS by modifying the number of heads and sectors being displayed from the USB flash device to match that of a zip drive. Then we partition the drive using partition 4 (the partition that zip drives typically use). For this tutorial we will use the mkdiskimage application that comes with syslinux.
Read the rest of this entry…
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/tag/bios/
Making Thermite Using Red Iron Oxide
Having the correct balance of fuel and oxidizer is key to having a stable burn in a thermite reaction. The thermite recipe for red iron oxide and aluminum is 3 parts iron oxide red to 1 part aluminum fuel. In pyrotechnic compositions the finer the ingredients and more well mixed they are, generally the easier it is to ignite, and the faster the reaction will progress.
So our goals in selecting thermite ingredients are ease of ignition and a stable, non-explosive burn.
For this example, we are using Skylighter's -325 mesh red iron oxide and Skylighter's -325 mesh bright aluminum, which has an average particle size of 45 microns.
| Ingredient | Parts by Wt. | Parts by % |
| Red iron oxide -325 mesh | 3 | 75 |
| Aluminum flake -325 mesh | 1 | 25 |
| Total | 100% |
To make a 4 ounce batch of thermite, first weigh out 3 ounces of red iron oxide. Then weigh out 1 ounce of aluminum powder. Dump them into a plastic tub, and put the top on. Shake them until the color is consistent throughout.
Then pass the mix through a 10-mesh or finer screen. If there are any clumps break them up with your fingers. Screen the mix two more times, or more, until you have a uniformly colored powder.
This can be a dusty process, so be sure and do it an area where the aluminum dust will not cause a problem. Do not try this where air is moving. The better you mix the ingredient, the faster and hotter the reaction will be. Thermite needs a very high temperature to ignite it.
Your thermite kit comes with 6 gold sparklers. The iron in them burns at around 1800 degrees F.
Here's how to use sparklers to ignite your thermite. Place your thermite mix in a plastic tub. Make a hole near the bottom on the side of the tub big enough for a sparkler to go through.
Push 1 to 2 of inches of the sparkler through the hole in the side of the tub into the mix inside. Leave at least 2-3 inches of your sparkler sticking out. Place the plastic tub on a metal surface that want to burn through. Light the sparkler, and get back 40 or 50 feet.
WARNING: Do NOT attempt to ignite your thermite by dipping your sparkler into the mix by hand. The mix can and does ignite violently, and will spray you with burning metal.
WARNING: A violent ignition of thermite can throw molten metal in all directions. Do not stand close to the mix when it is igniting or burning.
TIP: If you have trouble igniting your thermite with a sparkler, try mixing some magnesium powder or chips into a small amount of thermite mix. Then you should be able to ignite the magnesium mix using your sparkler.
WARNING: Thermite burns extremely hot and produces molten iron slag that can melt though a car's engine block! Burning thermite can spatter molten iron a long way from the burning pile. Stay as far back as you can. And make sure there is nothing nearby that can catch fire. Start your thermite experiments with small amounts at first, until you understand how it behaves, and how far it will throw molten metal slag.
WARNING: You cannot extinguish a thermite fire with water. Do not attempt to put the fire out with water, or you may have a violent, steam explosion, which can throw molten slag as well. Likewise, do not use any wet materials to attempt to extinguish the fire.
http://www.skylighter.com/fireworks/how-to-make/Thermite.asp
FOR SALE SEARCH FOR THE CAS NUMBER:
Metal Nano Powder
Stock Number:
NS6130-01-107
NS6130-01-107
CAS Number:
7440-22-5 (CHEMICAL NUMBER DATABASE)
7440-22-5 (CHEMICAL NUMBER DATABASE)
MSDS:
Specification:
