Fake Flash Drives from TopKeen
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The company Topkeen Industry Co. sent 1000 4GB flash drives that were discovered to be fake. Upon inspection: 1) All of the drives were broken and badly glued. 2) The drives only had 2GB of storage, despite being labeled as 4GB. They used chips that were actually only 2GB in size. 3) Using software tools, the author was able to recalibrate some of the drives to the actual 2GB capacity, but 15% were completely non-functional. Efforts were made to re-glue the functional drives, but the quality was still very poor. Ultimately, the drives could not be presented to customers as advertised due to the deception and poor workmanship.
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Fake Flash Drives from TopKeen
- 1. Fake Flash Drives from Shenzhen Topkeen Industry Co or History of an Order Stas Fomin, stas@custis.ru, stanislav.fomin@gmail.com May 6, 2009 1 / 65
- 2. We order 1000 flash 4GB-drives from Topkeen Inc http://www.topkeen.com http://www.topkeen.com is now dead, but they have still a lot of pages, just Google Shenzhen Topkeen Industry. Snow11 ask not confuse Shenzhen Topkeen Industry and Shenzhen Topkeen Electronics http://www.topkeen.net.cn (see comments on slideshare). 2 / 65
- 3. Some days ago we got it. . . 3 / 65
- 4. 4 / 65
- 5. But problem number 1: All flash drives has been broken into pieces. (Badly glued). 5 / 65
- 6. 6 / 65
- 7. And big problem number 2: All flash drives are FAKE . They pretend to be 4GB flash drives, but actually they are not. 7 / 65
- 8. 8 / 65
- 9. 9 / 65
- 10. Looks like normal 4GB flash, FAT32 format 10 / 65
- 11. 11 / 65
- 12. Also looks like normal 4GB flash, FAT32 format 12 / 65
- 13. 13 / 65
- 14. FAR manager Looks like normal 4GB flash, FAT32 format 14 / 65
- 15. 15 / 65
- 16. 16 / 65
- 17. Trying to play copied file WTF? 17 / 65
- 18. starting from position 7D790000 (hex) = 2105081856 (dec) 2007 MB all bytes are incorrect 18 / 65
- 19. Lets run expert tools Looks like 4GB flash drive 19 / 65
- 20. ? starting from 2GB-position read speed increased from 11 MB/s to 32 MB/s 20 / 65
- 21. 21 / 65
- 22. Again half of flash-memory is bad 22 / 65
- 23. FLASH MICROCHIP INSIDE OF TOPKEEN 4GB FLASH 23 / 65
- 24. FLASH MICROCHIP SAMSUNG K9GAG08U0M-PCB0 INSIDE OF TOPKEEN 4GB FLASH 24 / 65
- 25. FLASH MICROCHIP SAMSUNG K9GAG08U0M-PCB0 capacity 16Gbit=2Gbyte INSIDE OF TOPKEEN 4GB FLASH 25 / 65
- 26. This is the answer 16 G bit = 2 G Bytes 4 GB 26 / 65 http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/productList.do?fmly_id=672
- 27. HERE IS THE PLACE FOR ANOTHER FLASH MICROCHIP CHIP SAMSUNG K9GAG08U0M-PCB0 capacity 16Gbit=2Gbyte INSIDE THE TOPKEEN 4GB FLASH 27 / 65
- 28. What now? How to fix? 28 / 65
- 29. 29 / 65
- 30. First, we need to recalibrate fake flash drives Ask Google about UdTools software, download and run it. For example, see http://forum.flashboot.ru/Files-file-158.html (This soft works only for specific flash microcontroller). 30 / 65
- 31. This is UdTools v.1.0.4.6 for chips: AMECO 8208, 6208A, 6208E (MW6208, MW8208) We use it to test and recalibrate fake USB flashes Use Google to find and download UdTools. For example http://forum.flashboot.ru/Filesfile158.html 31 / 65
- 32. UdTools automatically detects flash drives Just plug-in USB flash drives (1,2,3 ) and click here 32 / 65
- 33. ook at this Tab Low quality, high speed (it takes about a minute) Best quality, low speed (about 30 minutes) Use "Special Scan" only for very bad flash drives with a lot of bad blocks this mode reduces capacity of a flash drive 33 / 65
- 34. Here you can set ANY capacity 4GB, 8GB, 32GB, and make fake flash drive. Please, do not do it! 34 / 65
- 35. 35 / 65
- 36. 36 / 65
- 37. 37 / 65
- 38. Yes, recalibrating takes a lot of time . Also, 15% of flash drives are completely dead (see next slides). 38 / 65
- 39. 39 / 65
- 40. 40 / 65
- 41. 41 / 65
- 42. Bad soldering. . . 42 / 65
- 43. A box of crap 150 dead flash drives. . . 43 / 65
- 44. Next problem: How to glue/stick/bond live flash drives? 44 / 65
- 45. 45 / 65
- 46. We try to glue them again 46 / 65
- 47. By cyanoacrylate. . . But it takes so much time. . . 47 / 65
- 48. So we use batch processing 48 / 65
- 49. put both pieces together. . . 49 / 65
- 50. stack it. . . 50 / 65
- 51. take some weights. . . 51 / 65
- 52. 52 / 65
- 53. press down the stack of flash drives. . . 53 / 65
- 54. take hairdryer. . . 54 / 65
- 55. and fan flash drives with hot air. . . 55 / 65
- 56. especially edges. . . 56 / 65
- 57. regularly. . . 57 / 65
- 58. press down the weights with your hands. . . 58 / 65
- 59. So flash drives are bonded with melted plastic edges 59 / 65
- 60. 60 / 65
- 61. 61 / 65
- 62. 62 / 65
- 63. Yes, flash drive has fair 2GB capacity and bonded now but still ugly because of melted edges, and badly glued logo plate also falling off . . . So impossible to present this to customers. . . 63 / 65
- 64. So we presented all these recovered flash drives. . . 64 / 65
- 65. . . . to students at career fairs 65 / 65