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I've been researching low-cost, yet strong, tamper-evident mechanisms, and purchased some low-cost glitter-hot-glue sticks as part of this research. The Amazon page advertising the sticks, seems to indicate (in the product photos) that they can be used on electronics; maybe the photos even hint as to it being possible to use the glue of the sticks, as a tamper-evidence mechanism when the glue is melted over a motherboard jumper (in a similar way to how glitter nail varnish can be used to implement tamper-evidence mechanisms over laptop screws). However, I cannot find on the internet, any other supporting information for using such glue sticks in such ways.

The text in the title is my question.

Photo of glitter hot glue sticks

Mark Fernandes
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  • How would the glitter nailpolish work? what is stopping me from replacing the screw and re-applying glitter to it? –  Dec 16 '20 at 11:31
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    The glitter nail polish idea is not my idea--it appears to have been generally accepted as a viable tamper-evidence mechanism. You need to photograph the nail-varnish patterns; the patterns form something like a "fingerprint". An adversary can remove the paint, and then repaint it, but then the "fingerprint" would change, and that would constitute the tamper evidence. – Mark Fernandes Dec 16 '20 at 11:35
  • The question then becomes if you can recognize the same pattern again. It's possible, but I doubt anyone would go that far in practice. It'll more likely be "The varnish looks fine, so it's probably fine" –  Dec 16 '20 at 12:18
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    One wonders if the glitter is conductive. I'd be hesitant to glue over a jumper. – gowenfawr Dec 16 '20 at 14:58
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    If you have glitter hot glue on a jumper, all I have to do is heat the other side of the PCB with a hair dryer, then freeze spray (dustoff) the warm glue wad to shatter the mobo bond, then pop the glued jumper off whole, virtually all the glue intact. Re-attach and re-warm to reseal. That, or just short the pins on the back of the jumper (if THT) or downstream of the jumper... – dandavis Dec 18 '20 at 23:12

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