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From: wtm@uhura.neoucom.EDU (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Zap, Fry, and Sizzle
Keywords: NSA-appoved chip destructor
Message-ID: <1990Feb25.194005.19027@uhura.neoucom.EDU>
Date: 25 Feb 90 19:40:05 GMT
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 21

Many moons ago, I had a job at a certain 3-letter goverment agency.
Somehow, I got assigned the job of giving tours to prospective new
hires.  One of my favorite labs to show off was the materials
torture-testing lab.  They had a neat display of the various ways
electronic things could be abused, elxpoded, tortured, destoyed,
etc.  The idea was to see if army radios really could survice being
dropped into a topical swamp or whatever.  Also, it was useful to
be able to blow things up when one was about to be over-run by the
enemy army, lest the crytological gear fall into the wrong hands.
Standard issue to embassies and outposts was an EPROM destructor --
the bottom business end of a waring blender with a stainless steel
lid into which crucial EPROMs could be dropped.  Cheap, but
effective (one of the few government devices that was -- cheap and
effective, that is).

Bill
-- 

Bill Mayhew  Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Rootstonw, OH  44272-9995  USA    216-325-2511
wtm@uhura.neoucom.edu   ....!uunet!aablue!neoucom!wtm