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#1
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Limitations of (All) Overwriting to Secure Data
1. The following seems to be accepted as fact, should it be?:
While there is no method of overwriting data which can render it truly impossible to recover, the expertise, cost and time required to recover data which has been thoroughly overwritten makes this possibility so remote as to be statistically irrelevant for the overwhelming majority of people. 2. How remote a possibility is it that a discarded, sold or donated HD could eventually end-up in the hands of a data-recovery-expert who already has the requisite equipment and, as a hobby, enjoys seeing what he can find on HDs which come his way? Perhaps the time required would make it prohibitive for someone currently working in the data-recovery field to do this without renumeration but what about someone now retired? Just wondering. 3. Would literally burning in fire a HD or other media (CD, FD, flash-drive, Zip, etc.) release toxic fumes? 4. How do military and gov. entities physically destroy media containing sensitive data? --- 'Reply' field invalid. Please reply to group. Thank you. |
#2
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Limitations of (All) Overwriting to Secure Data
Paul wrote:
This doc is a reasonable primer. http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/tsb/pubs/it_sec/g2-003_e.pdf Paul !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"htmlheadtitle/title/headbody/body/html You didn't give it enough overwrite random passes!! :-)( -- Virg Wall, PE |
#3
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Limitations of (All) Overwriting to Secure Data
On Thu, 06 Jul 2006 18:50:16 GMT, Inquirer
wrote: 1. The following seems to be accepted as fact, should it be?: While there is no method of overwriting data which can render it truly impossible to recover, the expertise, cost and time required to recover data which has been thoroughly overwritten makes this possibility so remote as to be statistically irrelevant for the overwhelming majority of people. No, it doesn't seem to be accepted as fact at all, quite the contrary. There is no amount of expertise, cost or time that has been demonstrated effective in recovering data if a sufficient # of random overwrite passes are performed. The biggest debate is how many passes are sufficient so most go overboard, to excess to err on the safe side. 2. How remote a possibility is it that a discarded, sold or donated HD could eventually end-up in the hands of a data-recovery-expert who already has the requisite equipment and, as a hobby, enjoys seeing what he can find on HDs which come his way? You are probably wasting your time, there's no reasonable way to calculate this for any one drive though obviously the possiblity can be considered extremely unlikely, unless your prior activities somehow targeted you for investigation. Perhaps the time required would make it prohibitive for someone currently working in the data-recovery field to do this without renumeration but what about someone now retired? You're still assuming it is only a matter of time or money. So far no amount of time or money has been able to recover data prudently overwritten, let the first proof if it surface before making any assumption that it is possible at all, ever, in any kind of scenario. I wonder if you are just trolling, looking to incite flaming arguments because you have already made false conclusions that completely invalidate your entire post. Don't rely on urban legends, seek actual proof that a drive with sufficient passes of random overwrites has been recovered one single time in the history of mankind. Anybody can make some random theory about how they would TRY to do it, or why it MIGHT be possible, but they are only considering very very basic concepts at that stage, have no reliable proof that it can be done without it actually being done. I've challenged others to supply proof and they can't, will make any excuse instead. There is no reason to believe it's possible, only that those claiming it are thinking it possible based on only limited information, conceptually, then begin arguing when they can't resolve the rest of the information needed to do it. I could claim I can jump up and land on the moon if we only think in such limited ways, ignoring other factors like gravity. |
#4
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Limitations of (All) Overwriting to Secure Data
Inquirer wrote:
1. The following seems to be accepted as fact, should it be?: Yep. While there is no method of overwriting data which can render it truly impossible to recover, Thats always been a mindless myth. the expertise, cost and time required to recover data which has been thoroughly overwritten makes this possibility so remote as to be statistically irrelevant for the overwhelming majority of people. Its actually rather safer than that. 2. How remote a possibility is it that a discarded, sold or donated HD could eventually end-up in the hands of a data-recovery-expert who already has the requisite equipment and, as a hobby, enjoys seeing what he can find on HDs which come his way? If you do the proper DOD secure wipe, he'll just be wasting his time. Perhaps the time required would make it prohibitive for someone currently working in the data-recovery field to do this without renumeration but what about someone now retired? Still wasting his time. Just wondering. 3. Would literally burning in fire a HD or other media (CD, FD, flash-drive, Zip, etc.) release toxic fumes? Not toxic in the sense that its any worse than burning anything. 4. How do military and gov. entities physically destroy media containing sensitive data? Varys. Usually its melted down. And thats done just because its cheap and eliminates any possibility of recovery. |
#5
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Limitations of (All) Overwriting to Secure Data
Inquirer wrote: 1. The following seems to be accepted as fact, should it be?: While there is no method of overwriting data which can render it truly impossible to recover, the expertise, cost and time required to recover data which has been thoroughly overwritten makes this possibility so remote as to be statistically irrelevant for the overwhelming majority of people. An ordinary 3 pass wipe makes it very difficult for most pracitial purposes. A Quick format is worthless, but a full format might keep the honest folks honest. 2. How remote a possibility is it that a discarded, sold or donated HD could eventually end-up in the hands of a data-recovery-expert who already has the requisite equipment and, as a hobby, enjoys seeing what he can find on HDs which come his way? Perhaps the time required would make it prohibitive for someone currently working in the data-recovery field to do this without renumeration but what about someone now retired? Just wondering. 3. Would literally burning in fire a HD or other media (CD, FD, flash-drive, Zip, etc.) release toxic fumes? Yes. So does burning ordinary Wood. the fire would have to be pretty hot to destroy a hard drive platter, but would probably work on tapes, floppies, CDS, and zips. 4. How do military and gov. entities physically destroy media containing sensitive data? --- 'Reply' field invalid. Please reply to group. Thank you. |
#6
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Limitations of (All) Overwriting to Secure Data
Usual wipe tool, like this
http://hddguru.com/content/en/softwa...HDD-Wipe-Tool/ is good enough for regular user, however there are techniques which CAN recover data from low level formatted HDD. It is possible because HDD is not 100% accurate mechanism and heads are not placed 100% at the center of the track, eventually, heads are writing information a little bit off-track and old information could be left "underneath" 3. Would literally burning in fire a HD or other media (CD, FD, flash-drive, Zip, etc.) release toxic fumes? I don't know about toxic fumes, but putting a CD into microwave for a few seconds is very effective way to destroy data on it. 4. How do military and gov. entities physically destroy media containing sensitive data? They destroy media physically and if government is selling any computer in auction - HDD is missing. -- Alan Kakareka Data Recovery Service 786-253-8286 cell http://www.247recovery.com -- |
#7
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Limitations of (All) Overwriting to Secure Data
Alan Kakareka wrote: Usual wipe tool, like this http://hddguru.com/content/en/softwa...HDD-Wipe-Tool/ is good enough for regular user, however there are techniques which CAN recover data from low level formatted HDD. It is possible because HDD is not 100% accurate mechanism and heads are not placed 100% at the center of the track, eventually, heads are writing information a little bit off-track and old information could be left "underneath" 3. Would literally burning in fire a HD or other media (CD, FD, flash-drive, Zip, etc.) release toxic fumes? I don't know about toxic fumes, but putting a CD into microwave for a few seconds is very effective way to destroy data on it. 4. How do military and gov. entities physically destroy media containing sensitive data? They destroy media physically and if government is selling any computer in auction - HDD is missing. I think this only applies to classified info. As my orginisation has recieved lots of computers from government agencies with intact (and *almost* always) wiped HDD. (We wipe all hard drives we get anyway with DBAN, so no biggie) |
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