A safety researcher has sounded the alarm over a transportable SSD listed on each AliExpress and Walmart, which seems to be programmed to misrepresent its personal storage capability.

As reported by Ars Technica (opens in new tab), a researcher that goes by the title of @RayRedacted on Twitter has revealed a teardown (opens in new tab) of an XGeek-branded SSD with a supposed capability of 30TB, on sale (opens in new tab) for between $29-$39.

Upon shut inspection, he discovered the producer had doubtless meddled with the drive’s firmware with a purpose to trick Home windows into misreporting the accessible storage capability, which in actuality is way, far decrease.

Faux transportable SSD?

Suspicious of the capability claims, @RayRedacted bought the SSD in query from AliExpress. When he cracked it open, he discovered what seemed to be two microSD playing cards glued in a haphazard method to a board.

A second crimson flag offered itself when the drive was plugged in. Though Home windows studies drive capability in gigabytes (GB), the OS really measures in gibibytes (GiB) and tebibytes (TiB), which is why 1TB drives sometimes seem to have a capability of roughly 930GB. However on this case, the SSD offered itself as two separate drives, every with a capability of exactly 15TB.

This discrepancy is attributed by @RayRedacted to a firmware hack that enables for a low-capacity drive (maybe as small as 1GB or much less) to register a a lot bigger capability. “Whenever you go to put in writing an enormous file, hacked firmware merely writes all new information on high of previous information, whereas retaining listing intact (sic),” he defined.

What’s extra, the producer seems to have taken steps to decelerate the bus velocity too, such that exams designed to confirm the drive’s real capability would soak up extra of a 12 months to finish.

The claims set out within the Twitter thread are corroborated by the Walmart critiques part, which is filled with feedback from sad prospects.

“Don’t purchase this,” one reviewer wrote. “This piece of rubbish doesn’t work, in any means, form or type”. Others reported that just one in each hundred information transferred efficiently, speeds have been gradual and file corruption commonplace.

TechRadar Professional has requested AliExpress, Walmart and JD E Commerce America Restricted (the service provider) for remark.

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