Thursday 26 February 2015

Another fake flash story

I recently purchased a 64GB mini SD card to slot in to my laptop and/or tablet, keeping media separate from my home directory pretty full of kernel sources.

This Samsung card looked fast enough, and at 25€ include shipping, seemed good enough value.


Hmm, no mention of the SD card size?

The packaging looked rather bare, and with no mention of the card's size. I opened up the packaging, and looked over the card.

Made in Taiwan?

What made it weirder is that it says "made in Taiwan", rather than "Made in Korea" or "Made in China/PRC". Samsung apparently makes some cards in Taiwan, I've learnt, but I didn't know that before getting suspicious.

After modifying gnome-multiwriter's fake flash checker, I tested the card, and sure enough, it's an 8GB card, with its firmware modified to show up as 67GB (67GB!). The device (identified through the serial number) is apparently well-known in swindler realms.

Buyer beware, do not buy from "carte sd" on Amazon.fr, and always check for fake flash memory using F3 or h2testw, until udisks gets support for this.

Amazon were prompt in reimbursing me, but the Comité national anti-contrefaçon and Samsung were completely uninterested in pursuing this further.

In short:

  • Test the storage hardware you receive
  • Don't buy hardware from Damien Racaud from Chaumont, the person behind the "carte sd" seller account