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"Smash Your Hard Drive" To Fight Identity Theft
Will Do This For Free writes "BBC News has a story about the only fireproof way of safeguarding your personal information when dumping your old computer: 'It sounds extreme, but the only way to be 100% safe is to smash your hard drive into smithereens. [...] The more thoroughly the better.'
This sounds like so much fun that I almost feel like doing it right now. Let me press Submit Story first."
and just use dBan, Derrick's Boot and Nuke.
Nothing beats an afternoon of watching dBan and a comfy chair. Beer or whisky optional.
import system.cool.Sig;
Problem is that most people are way too stupid to understand how to use that, but they can understand smash.
The funny part, 90% of those people that understand smash, will not smash it enough. I have recovered data from laptop hard drives that looked pretty smashed, but 45 minutes in my improvised clean room moving the platters to a different drive and I was able to read the contents.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The platters don't have to be melted, they only need to be heated to the Curie point to loose all their information. Of course, that would still take a pretty hot fire.
Really, there's no need to wipe it more than once unless you honestly think it will matter. At least these guys think so:
http://16systems.com/zero
It's really not that hard to transfer platters. and yes use an identical drive.
a makeshift clean room is easy. run the shower in the bathroom for 15 minutes on the hottest setting and then shut it off and let the room cool down completely. the mist in the air will remove all dust as it falls to the ground. use a tyvek suit and cover your hair, face, hands and you're good to go.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In other news: people still stupid. Has anyone here actually TRIED to get stuff back off a Guttmann wiped drive? Or even a DoD 7 wiped drive?
My class in computer security had some time to kill and someone brought that up so the teacher said "Well, we've got a bunch of PCs from last upgrade waiting to be re-imaged and given away to students...let me see what I can score us!". He ended up getting us a half a dozen PCs set up in the back of the class with 2 HDDs set up in each so we could run plenty of different tests. We did everything from MSFT format to one pass to three pass to DoD 7 to Guttman. We researched and then used every piece of freeware and trialware that we could get our little hands on. Here is our findings:
MSFT format is of course pointless, as everyone knows. 1 pass of zeroes we got around,sorry but it has been awhile, but we got around 80% IIRC. 3 pass was lower(0,1,random), somewhere in the 10-20% range, depending on the software used, but most of the "recovered" data was garbled beyond use, DoD-7 made it pretty much impossible, I think we got 2 .txt files and they were so garbled we couldn't decide if it had actually recovered ANYTHING, certainly nothing you could use, and finally Guttmann we got squat.
So if someone were to spend the $$$$ to have the drive taken apart in a clean room and analyzed and you only used one or two pass of predictable patterns then yeah, I might see wanting to destroy. But I haven't seen anyone bragging about beating D0D-7 with what the average hacker would have access to, much less Guttmann. So frankly unless someone here has a citation I have to call bullshit. Frankly it makes me wonder if this kind of stuff isn't cooked up by the HDD manufacturers. I can just imagine them spinning this- "Before giving away that machine destroy the hard drive first!(so they'll have to buy a new one from us! Yay!)"
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I read years ago (and I'm sure it was made up) of a memo sent out to IT managers in the DOD (United States Department Of Defense). It went.
To properly dispose of hard drives which may contain Top secret information is a 5 step process to be performed in the order specified and by competent engineers.
1. Perform a triple overwrite security erase on the entire disk.
2. Use a bulk degausser (AKA a powerful electro magnet).
3. Crush the drive under a roller or tank tracks, whichever is more convenient.
4. Melt the scrap into slag.
5. Bury that Slag in a toxic waste dump to deter any attempts at data recovery.
That's not exactly how it went but I think this is pretty close. Can anyone find the original?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Hard drives are cheap. If you have any data that you absolutely don't want to get out...EVER...physical destruction is the 100% solution.
And, in terms of practicality, running DoD-7 takes about 1000 times longer than whipping out the old Sledge-O-Matic. If you're retiring a few dozen computers, even that gets old, and you start looking for the thermite.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.