RE: Interesting One

["maillist" <maillist () avoiderman com>]

I disagree with you both - the NSA standard for a drive that will be
recycled is a nine-pass wipe ... involving pseudo-random data, 0s and 1s ...
preferably in a non-predictable order ...

Reading after thirty overwrites is just scare mongering.  Depending on the
media it might just be possible on some drives (where the heads have moved
over time) ... but the kit to read from drives after just a couple of wipes
is expensive, and usually just the provision of government types ...

Avoiderman

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nero, Nick [mailto:Nick.Nero () disney com]
> Sent: 29 October 2002 17:30
> To: Dave Adams; security-basics () security-focus com
> Subject: RE: Interesting One
>
>
> Well, the NSA standard I believe is that zero-filling a drive (writing
> all 0's to the platter) will make the data impossible to recover, but I
> am sure there are some instances when this isn't the cause depending on
> how retentive the media is and all that.  If is electromagnetically
> degaussed for an extended period of time, I can't imagine anything could
> recover the data.
>
> Nick Nero, CISSP
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Adams [mailto:dadams () johncrowley co uk]
> Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 5:06 PM
> To: security-basics () security-focus com
> Subject: Interesting One
>
>
> Greetings Folks,
>
> I had an interesting conversation today with someone from FAST
> (Federation Against Software Theft) They pretend not to be a snitch wing
> of the BSA. Anyway, to get to the point, the guy that came to see me
> said that their forensics guys could read data off a hard drive that had
> been written over up to thirty times. I find this very hard to believe
> and told him I thought he was mistaken but the guy was adamant that it
> could be done. My question is, does anyone have any views on this, or,
> can anyone point me to a source of information where I can get the facts
> on exactly how much data can be retrieved off a hard drive and under
> what conditions etc etc.
>
> Thanks
>
> Dave Adams