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Not-So-Clean Hard Drives For Sale
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "The Register is running a story about a security consulting company that as part of a study bought hard drives and laptops on eBay, and then was able to recover highly sensitive data including customer databases, financial information, payroll records, personnel details, login codes, and admin passwords for their secure Intranet site. This is a bit scary considering all of these drives were supposedly formatted and sold for surplus by major companies (although few of us actually use the multiple formatting standards of the DoD). Looks like it's hardly necessary for crooks to get at your private information, although I sure industrial espionage spooks have probably done this for awhile." Shades of the recent post about recovering sensitive contents from swap partitions.
To whoever bought my old hard drive on eBay, those pictures were all for research purposes only.
Sincerely
Peter Townshend
You know, there are signs on pools for this very reason.
I hate sigs.
has taken a "hard dive".
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. - HST
Step2: ???
Step3: profit
let's discuss Step2
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I bought a old computer once that had a database of about 200 names, address, phone numbers, DOBs and SSNs. They didn't delete anything on the hard drive. It had NT on it, I just used linux to check what was on it for grits and shingles. That company is lucky that I'm not evil...any opening bids?
In other news, SCO recently purchased a used PC from eBay containing its IP and e-mails sent by Linus Torvalds proving that he stole SCO's IP for the linux kernel, and that he didn't actually write the linux kernel.
What? Troll, am I? Well, it's slashdot. Someone had to poke fun at SCO. Sue me.
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
timothy... you just took one buddy.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
Rather than make a few tens of dollars selling an old drive, take it apart, and burn the platters until they're nothing more than dust. Problem solved.
...then mix the dust with concrete and water, let it harden into several small chunks, charter a ship around the world, and drop each chunk in a different spot in the ocean.
My homemade pr0n is very unsafe. Don't try this one at home unless you're a trained professional!
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Stories like this really scare me, but I know I'm ok - I format my hard drive with my licenced Microsoft Windows XP CD, so I know there's no sensitive data left to be found! That's one of the many benefits of running secure and professionally developed software like windows.
buy some hard drives on eBay and you could end up with some cool data!
Of course you are more likely to buy some hard drives on eBay and end up with the entire history of some guy's girlfriend's medical problems in old e-mails, a small collection of old cached Slashdot pages, and some rather naff Flash animations.
Maybe someone bought the old hard drives from a /. server, grabbed the admin passwords for the site, and keeps posting the old articles they recover!
It makes perfect sense. Surely the admins can't keep making these mistakes over and over...
err, nebbermind.
kM
-- You can't drink all day. (Unless you start in the morning...)
using a state of the art solution from JBoss, otherwise they would not have been in this situation in the first place. Only with patented technology from JBoss can you truly get rid of sensitive data on your hard drive. No competition can compare to the advanced solutions offered by JBoss. Nothing even comes close. I do not work for JBoss.
Well, that's BS. Nothing even remotely important gets put into a PowerPoint presentation.
I know, I've been to meetings. God, have I been to meetings...
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Label it? You mean, something like "Windows Installation" or "Intrarnet Access" and leave it laying around school?
Banaaaana!
Horses don't normally wear clothes, you know.
then mix the dust with concrete and water, let it harden into several small chunks, charter a ship around the world, and drop each chunk in a different spot in the ocean.
Damn. You're the guy responsible for every Adventure game ever.
Now I gotta go collect this guy's harddrive and reassemble it so I can get the Master Sword.
Geek hint: Do this in that mythical place called "outide", unless you have a very understanding landlord/mother.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Do all that, and then smash it with a hammer into bit size pieces. And then throw those pieces to the bottom of various oceans.
Then you are safe...maybe.
Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to pull the trigger of a sniper rifle.
Yep, found a computer in my school parking lot-someone didn't want to pay the nifty $50 fee San Diego residents are required to fork out to recycle old computers. Hey Kyle, if you're reading this, your data is safe with me;)
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
*excuse the pun, but it's kind of fitting. but please note the sarcasm.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Or you can do the following:
(1) wipe the drive with ones
(2) wipe the drive with zeroes
(3) fill the drive with p0rn
(4) wipe the drive with ones
(5) wipe the drive with zeroes
When they get to the p0rn layer, the chances are good that they will stop looking further. Once they find all those goodies you planted at step 3, they won't look for all those financial records.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Are companies really so desperate for money that X?
Yes (for almost any value of X).
Hmm. Well, I format, change partition type, overwrite the entire disk contents several times, then format again. If I'm really feeling paranoid I install windows, and hook it up to the internet without a firewall or any patches. If there is any data left on it after a day, i'd be quite surprised.
Not a sentence!
I always thought it was funny to see the phrase "industrial-strength steel" -- as though there was steel on the market that *wasn't* produced by heavy industry... "Oh yeah, sure, I have a little smelter in my basement, but I only use that for light applications, you wanna do this job right you gotta use industrial strength steel!"
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
And let's not forget about Dihydrogen Monoxide. That stuff is everywhere and very lethal to inhale.
My friends and I take our old drives out for target practice. Some .357 and .308 usually do the trick. If someone can get my chat logs off of that then more power to them.
That's what I call a format.
No kidding! I once read about the population of an entire planet that was killed off due to a particularly nasty virus contracted from a filthy telephone, embarassingly after they had sent off all of their telephone sanitizers to colonize a new world.
You can't make stuff like that up...
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx