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NASA MGS data on Ebay memory card

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Conundrum

Fri Dec 06 2013, 08:35AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

Hi all.
This is so insane I had to triple check to be sure BUT....

Received a pile of 40 defunct memory cards from an Ebay seller, of dubious vintage.
Some are fakeflash, some just cook when you connect them.
Two work

so got my money back at least.

Went to check this one and it wouldn't erase.
Checked on Winhex and found a strange string and 30GB of seemingly random data with
this string.2687AATSTL0628C1Chksum at the start.

Did a Google search for 28C1Chksum hoping to isolate the fault and found this.

It looks like I might have stumbled across original NASA data on a memory card.
Can someone please advise what to do with it?
EDIT: See

refers to 32GB cards!

Also I've been advised by someone "in the know" that there may be a legitimate reason for this data to be write protected, apparently this is to prevent damage during data analysis if the card is installed in a normal PC rather than the special setup used.

thanks!

-A

Shrad

Fri Dec 06 2013, 08:48AM

Registered Member #3215 Joined: Sun Sept 19 2010, 08:42PM
Location:
Posts: 780

save data somewhere and investigate for yourself, before deciding anything

you can also try to isolate some separate files

this .imq format could contain gigabytes of data in single files, or it could be multiple smaller files

these are images that gimp would be able to open, from what I found

Conundrum

Fri Dec 06 2013, 08:52AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

Thats interesting.
Have emailed NASA and asked for advice, as there is a lot of data on here.

From what it looks like, this is a data dump from the Mars Global Surveyor, containing various raw
image files and navigational data.
How it got onto this card $Deity knows, possibly someone at NASA put it in the box of cards to send back
to manufacturers for testing instead of shredded.

-A

Shrad

Fri Dec 06 2013, 09:56AM

Registered Member #3215 Joined: Sun Sept 19 2010, 08:42PM
Location:
Posts: 780

.img files of the mars mission are available publicly, but your might be different

might be a card someone used to transfer some data to a personal computer and then formatted it

Carbon_Rod

Fri Dec 06 2013, 10:07AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

All NASA components are considered property of the federal government, and when decommissioned it must be physically scrapped. This does not fall under Laws related to trade & commerce, as more than one ambitious collector has discovered. Possession of stolen property even by accident is still a potential criminal matter.

i.e. stick it in a zip-lock bag, and return it to the rightful owners with information describing the sale's origin.

Heres a 10-foot poll and some advice....

Don't be tempted to try and sell the materials, or you may end up like the used car lot owner that purchased a surplus engine. NASA and JPL do not look favorably upon someone bleeding parts from their stripped programs.

Conundrum

Fri Dec 06 2013, 06:32PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

Thanks, will do.
In the meantime I've not received an email back, perhaps they are sending the black helicopters

I recall a similar case where a guy bought a camera in the UK that turned out to have military secrets on it...

Patrick

Wed Jan 22 2014, 09:36PM

Registered Member #2431 Joined: Tue Oct 13 2009, 09:47PM
Location: Chico, CA. USA
Posts: 5639

The NSA will no doubt issue a kill/no-capture warrant for you. Then inform the bilderberg group, and Stasi/FSB/KGB and Walmart secret police of your demise.

Conundrum

Wed Apr 08 2015, 07:28AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4061

Still here, maybe the data was someone else's download of publicly available archives.
I did read somewhere that the Mckinnon/Love case actually led to a lot of stuff being published simply to keep the conspiracy loonies happy ie proof that the "non terrestrial officers" referenced a MMORPG and some of the names matched up!
Also a lot of Mckinnon's screen shots later turned out to match up with known images commonly used as screen savers.
EDIT: Intriguingly the referenced information might relate to the recent discovery of flowing water on Mars, if so then had I been able to decode it at the time it would have been very valuable indeed.

I've been informed by someone who wishes not to be identified that the data *might* have been striped in some way for security and to increase access speeds for analysis, due to slow x2 cards available at the time.
So this is maybe 25% of the original but enough to be interesting, although did get another card partially working despite a crack through the controller IC the Flash appears to be intact.
EDIT: I still need to recover it, its a lot harder than first thought without forensics training.
I did send a lot of items to the UK, but couldn't find the chip at the time so it got missed.

EDIT: The encrypted copy of the data I sent to "The Register" got lost in the post as did the copy sent to a civilian Mars researcher in the western US who shall remain nameless for their safety.

Also see

found this morning, related to the previously mentioned data but concerns Europa not Mars (coincidentally).
Also the link mysteriously went dark around January 2014.. perhaps someone noticed my email after all ?!

anyone want a copy?
The "blank" card (*3) has remnants of the overwritten data at specific Vcc ranges suggesting I might be able to recover fragments using more advanced forensics tools.
EDIT 19/08/18 intriguing experiment: run it with extreme cooling and resonating voltage fluctuations tuned to the internal bus frequency might do something simple over/undervoltage wouldnt if running sequential read and using SDR to proximity scan chips using a process I invented. Needs 4 data channels but doable and might allow me to read AES256 keys off nearly dead hardware.

I'm in the process of rounding up all my copies of the data including analysis done so far, as well as copies of my PC hard drive(s) with the special software and partially written CDR etc.
Apart from the failed 750 as this is deader than dead due to a failure on the laptop that evidently wiped the firmware zone.

If anyone at NASA is reading this and wants to sort this out once and for all please contact me via this channel.

EDIT: Or did, alas it broke during the read.
I may have to send it off for recovery but it is complicated by a possible controller failure on the actual drive caddy which is locked for some inexplicable reason to the make and model of this drive (ST3000)

EDIT: Phobos is actually breaking up and probably won't last more than 10K years at the most.
Apparently this explains the density anomalies and stretch marks on the surface, essentially it changes shape as it orbits very slightly.
Also did anyone hear that someone working at NASA may have *tried* to get hold of me but my parents didn't know if it was genuine or not.

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