Bugtraq mailing list archives
Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory?
From: "Jared Johnson" <jaredsjazz () Yahoo com>
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 19:48:44 -0400
All, Do you all agree with Peter Gutman's conclusion on his theory that data can never really be erased, as noted in his quote below: "Data overwritten once or twice may be recovered by subtracting what is expected to be read from a storage location from what is actually read. Data which is overwritten an arbitrarily large number of times can still be recovered provided that the new data isn't written to the same location as the original data (for magnetic media), or that the recovery attempt is carried out fairly soon after the new data was written (for RAM). For this reason it is effectively impossible to sanitise storage locations by simple overwriting them, no matter how many overwrite passes are made or what data patterns are written. However by using the relatively simple methods presented in this paper the task of an attacker can be made significantly more difficult, if not prohibitively expensive." It seems that the perhaps the only real way to rid your Hard Drives of data is to burn them. I'd love to hear some thoughts on this from security and data experts out there.
Current thread:
- Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Jared Johnson (Jul 21)
- RE: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Barbara Lockwood (Jul 21)
- RE: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Tiago Halm (Jul 22)
- Re: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Jay D. Dyson (Jul 21)
- Re: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Thor (Hammer of God) (Jul 22)
- Re: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Simple Nomad (Jul 21)
- Re: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Volker Tanger (Jul 22)
- Re: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Alexander L. Ivanchev (Jul 27)
- Re: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Casper . Dik (Jul 27)
- Re: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Vincent DUVERNET (Nolmë Informatique) (Jul 22)
- Re: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Jake Appelbaum (Jul 27)
- Re: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Volker Tanger (Jul 22)
(Thread continues...)
- RE: Peter Gutmann data deletion theaory? Barbara Lockwood (Jul 21)