How to destroy data

[Tough Guy no. 1265]

3TB of data securely wiped using a wire brush, a high speed drill, and a bolt cutter.

[JimK]

Couldn't you just burn it?

Jim K

[dennis]

Trying to hide something?

[Tough Guy no. 1265]

Who isn't?

[Tim+]

Well sadly, where even having a *drawing* of people having the "wrong" kind of sex can get you criminalised, the chances are many of us may have stuff to hide.

Tim

[Tough Guy no. 1265]

Wait until they can detect impure thoughts.

Hey, I've got a drawing of a murder. Now since murder is generally considered worse than sex (it has a longer prison sentence for a start), shouldn't that drawing be illegal too?

Just a minute, their stupid excuse is whoever took the photograph was "abusing them" - so er.... the cartoon character was abused?

[Pieces of Eight]

"Tough Guy no. 1265" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

stick to drawing the dole, that's all you'll ever achieve.

[Brian-Gaff]

Well, high temperatures can do it without all the excessive much and mess. Brian

[tabbypurr]

I've always thought that media that are thrown out as surely unreadable today will likely be trivial to read in a couple of decades.

NT

[RayL12]

I remember an article on data protection. It suggested that plater dust could be sneaked out in corners of pockets. each piece of dust could render 120K of data?

The readers could read down six levels of change giving a possible 720K.

Can't remember where I read the article. Probably Spy v Spy; MAD?

...Ray.

[Tim Streater]

Sounds about right. You'd know how to order those bits then, would you?

[RayL12]

LOL> You saying you haven't got your fave' searh-engine?

[Tim Streater]

That's going to tell which how to arrange 720,000 separate bits in the right order, is it?

[tabbypurr]

There are a few possible approaches to that issue. Looking for the data onl ine with a search engine is one, to see what file/s it's part of. Another i s having a computer examine random combinations of the recovered data block s to look for some sort of sense in them. Another is merely looking in thos e blocks for short strings that give some key info, such as keywords. Anoth er is to just look at where else the same strings of bits occur, thus gaini ng some information about communication channels in use, which in turn give s some clues as to the nature of the information. Etc.

Far more likely though is reading entire devices in which all or nearly all data is intact.

NT

[Tough Guy no. 1265]

Molten steel is a mess.

[Johnny B Good]

In one sense, yes but it would require a million dollar forensic investment to recover *sufficient* incriminating evidence (chump change in government department budget speak).

I've just done a 'quick and dirty' calculation of just how much data can be stored along just one millimetre of track. The estimate came out just shy of 9KB's worth! (assumed 120MB/s SDTR on a modern HDD's outermost tracks, about 4 1/2 inches in circumference at 7200rpm -120 revs per second, therefore about 1MB per 4 1/2 inches of track producing a figure of 8.749 KB per millimetre).

These figures reinforce my initial impression from the picture posted by Tough Guy, that he hadn't done a thorough enough job to stop a well funded security agency from being able to lift enough incriminating evidence for a safe conviction from those very large chunks of platter despite inflicting some scratches over the magnetic surface coating.

If he *really* had something *so* incriminating as to justify smashing the drive to smithereens in the first place in order to hide evidence, he really aught to have subjected the remains of those platters to a 1000 deg C heat treatment as the final coupé de grace.

Of course, a properly trained spy or terrorist would keep an oxy- acetylene torch to hand to bypass the messy and noisy business of smashing the drive to smithereens and cut straight to the chase. :-)

[RayL12]

In the right order?? We are talking destruction of data.

In the world of espionage those fragments could tell a story.

[Huge]

Jesus Christ, but you're dumb.

[tabbypurr]

Typically hdds are discarded whole. When broken up they're normally far lar ger than 1mm, and each lump has lots of tracks in parallel. So 9k is orders of magnitude out.

NT

[tabbypurr]

More realistically, a wacky story can be made up in which bits of almost random data fit, and a person prosecuted on that basis.

NT