DoD drives that contain classified data must be destroyed (typically
through incineration). Drives that didn't contain classified data may go
through the 7 wipe process you mention. BCwipe is a program for windows
that does a good job.
At least some data can be restored from a drive with anything you do other
than destroying the drive through heat or chemicals. It is true that most
of this restoration is only done by government sources and in important
cases. I've discussed this with more than one Air Force OSI personnel.
Since a hard drive does not write over EXACTLY the same spot every time
there are some fragments left. You just can't get rid of those fragments
through normal drive operation.
mike
At 09:49 AM 10/30/2002 -0600, Tim - IBL wrote:
>I believe that DoD recommendations is to completely overwrite the drive
>7 times. As stated in other posts this does not mean "deleting the
>files" this means actually overwriting all the sectors during a "low
>level" format. There are tools available from hard drive manufacturer's
>web site for free...I know that Maxtor and Seagate have tools on the
>website that run from a bootable floppy. What you're looking for is a
>generally going to be called a "low level formatter" for the benefit of
>the general public. What you want it to do is write patterns to the
>hard drive. All 0's is called "zeroing a drive"; write all 0's to a
>drive is nice, but even when over-writing once there is a trace of the
>underlying data that can typically be recovered using very expensive
>tools and a time consuming process, this is why the DoD decided to
>suggest multiple times. 7 was picked after conducting some tests on the
>recoverability of data. Every computer that leaves the DoD is formatted
>(and overwritten) 7 times, because their research indicated that the
>original data is then too hard to hard recover. There are variations on
>a theme that will let you write all 1's, write alternating 1's and 0's,
>or write random patterns of 1's and 0's. If you use these different
>methods instead of just writing 1's every time, I imagine it would be
>even harder to extrude any useful data from the drive with each pass.
>
>To answer the original question, if the drive in question is a standard
>hard drive, that has been overwritten with patterns or bogus data 30
>times, I don't think that there is any way to recover original data,
>even with electron microscopes and such, but if that's not the case,
>feel free to prove me wrong.
>
>-t
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Nero, Nick [mailto:Nick.Nero_at_disney.com]
>Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2002 11:30 AM
>To: Dave Adams; security-basics_at_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_at_johncrowley.co.uk]
>Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 5:06 PM
>To: security-basics_at_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
>
>
>
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