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Not-So-Clean Hard Drives For Sale

Posted by timothy on from the oops dept.

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.

20 of 436 comments (clear)

  1. Oh no... by Snad · · Score: 5, Funny

    To whoever bought my old hard drive on eBay, those pictures were all for research purposes only.

    Sincerely
    Peter Townshend

    1. Re:Oh no... by Ateryx · · Score: 5, Funny

      I swear on my life, every hard drive I've gotten from a garage sale has had some sort of horse porn on it.
      After the 4th out of 5 harddrive I was scanning had horse porn I just figured it'd be better to not look anymore.

      --
      "The truth suffers from too much analysis"
    2. Re:Oh no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I swear on my life, every hard drive I've gotten from a garage sale has had some sort of horse porn on it.
      After the 4th out of 5 harddrive I was scanning had horse porn I just figured it'd be better to not look anymore.

      I remember my first laptop, a 386sx with vga b&w screen. It was so spiffy I wanted some pictures to show it off, any pictures would do. This was the late 1980s and the only gifs you could find on local BBSs were porn. So I got some porn. In dennies I was asked if my computer could display pictures. I said "Sure here's an image of a woman having sex with a horse". The waitress was so impressed, the quality, the detail, yet was somewhat disusted. So not to apear sexist, I showed here another one "here's a picture of a man having sex with a horse". She asked me if I had some pictures without horses, I had to say "No, the only pictures you can get for computers are of people and horses having sex".

  2. Hard dives. by Raven42rac · · Score: 4, Funny

    You know, there are signs on pools for this very reason.

    --
    I hate sigs.
  3. Slashdot Spellchecker.... by Papatoast · · Score: 4, Funny

    has taken a "hard dive".

    --
    We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. - HST
    1. Re:Slashdot Spellchecker.... by Brandybuck · · Score: 3, Funny

      Nobody is this bad of a speller. The purpose is beyond my comprehension, but it can only be deliberate. I'm going to go through past stories and try to crack the code. There's got to be a secret buried in the mispellings...

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    2. Re:Slashdot Spellchecker.... by mdielmann · · Score: 3, Funny

      Here's the code. Take every letter that is missed, and add it to your message. If an extra letter is added to a word, take a letter off your message. Repeat. If you follow it long enough, you will get the following message: "You are a loser with too much time on your hands." Don't ask how I know this.

      --
      Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
  4. In other news... by Nicholas+Evans · · Score: 4, Funny

    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 ||
  5. Re:If you're really paranoid about your data... by nomadic · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  6. I know I'm OK! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  7. Re:Similar to MIT students in Jan 2003 by Snad · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  8. Why SlashDot keeps posting dupes! by kidMike · · Score: 5, Funny

    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...)
  9. PowerPoint presentations? by pyrrhonist · · Score: 5, Funny
    15 Microsoft PowerPoint presentations containing highly sensitive company information.

    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.
  10. Re:Eraser (GPL) by Exiler · · Score: 5, Funny

    Label it? You mean, something like "Windows Installation" or "Intrarnet Access" and leave it laying around school?

    --
    Banaaaana!
  11. Um... by Dwonis · · Score: 5, Funny
    Naked horses != horse porn...

    Horses don't normally wear clothes, you know.

    1. Re:Um... by jpetts · · Score: 5, Funny

      Naked horses != horse porn...

      Horses don't normally wear clothes, you know.

      You are so wrong!

      --
      Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
  12. Re:If you're really paranoid about your data... by prockcore · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  13. Re:A Large Multinational Bank had this problem by irokitt · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  14. Re:Little bits of metal == the only way to go by real_smiff · · Score: 5, Funny
    phew, good thing you dissolved that platter dust! otherwise, obviously, we'd have terrorists glueing the bits* back together and getting the data back. i mean, if you'd stopped after grinding them down with the belt sander, i dread to think where we'd be..

    *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.

  15. A use for all those pictures full of pink bits. by B.D.Mills · · Score: 4, Funny

    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