Registering/Accounts with online vendors

[KRFinch at dstsystems.com]

I remember a conversation on this topic with a good friend of mine from
high school.  He's a civilian employee of military intelligence, and has
the cool job of investigating companies accused of defrauding the
government through defense contracts.  The reason why his job is cool in
what would otherwise be a tedious area is that he is the guy that "hacks"
into seized systems and their media, and looks for incriminating evidence.
Hacking into systems and defeating encryption for a living?  Cool.  Doing
so legally at someplace with a huge budget?  Very cool.

Anyway, he said something to me once that I'll probably never forget:

"Data tracks on a hard drive are as easy to follow as footprints in the
sand once you get them under an electron microscope.  It's never a matter
of whether we can get data off of the drive or not, its just a matter of
whether or not its worth spending the money."

I went on to ask him about some of these "secure erasing" utilities I had
seen advertised that write ones and zeroes over your data, and he said that
they weren't really all that secure, once you get down to a molecular
level.  He said that he would only start to feel confident that something
was illegible after it was written over at least a thousand times.

Just related food for thought, I guess.

- Kevin

                                                                                                    
                
                    "Jonathan Hutchins"                                                             
                
                    <hutchins at opus1.com>         To:     <dattaway at attaway.net>, "Michael"          
                
                    Sent by:                      <mogmios at mlug.missouri.edu>                       
                
                    owner-kclug at marauder.i       cc:     "DCT Jared Smith" <jared at dctkc.com>, 
<kclug at kclug.org>     
                    lliana.net                   Subject:     Re: Registering/Accounts with online 
vendors          
                                                                                                    
                
                                                                                                    
                
                    07/22/2002 03:10 PM                                                             
                
                                                                                                    
                
                                                                                                    
                

----- Original Message -----
From: <dattaway at attaway.net>

> The best way to wipe a hard drive is with a 20 pound hammer.

That's a pretty recoverable wipe.  The data is all still there, if a bit
harder to read.  A old bulk-tape eraser does a much better job, but is not
DES compatible.  You either need to actively write over the data (multiple
times) or dissolve/remove/scramble the magnetic coating on the platters.