Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: Jasper800 on June 15, 2013, 06:02 pm
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So this question has probably been posted 10000x times, but perhaps not with a step-by-step instruction. I plan on backing up important pictures, recorded music, etc.... onto 16 and 8 gig flash drives :-\ (I so wish I had an external HD) and formatting my PC and installing a new Windows. The computer I have is refurbished and has needed a good reinstall and cleaning. I have been lazy with upkeep lately and I think it's time to start this project.
On top of SR, I have always been quite a bit of a pirate (as I assume most of us are) I'd like to completely remove all traces of everything off this computer. This may be an impossible task, but hopefully not. The backing up of my data onto these small flash drives is going to be pretty shitty. One of the USBs, when removed, causes a blue screen warning/shutdown to happen. That's fun.
I am sure there are a lot of savvy folk... It would be nice to have a step-by step tutorial (have fun trolls ;D.) Thanks for legit answers in advance!
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Not trying to be snarky here - just Google "how to securely erase hard drive" and learn about it. There are countless step by step articles that explain how to go about erasing and overwriting your hard drive. There's many different programs and ways of doing it. If it's an SSD make sure to include that in your search.
PS an external 1TB hard drive is $75. I bet if you shop around you could do better than that, or just get 500GB or 250GB. Thumb drives are super expensive compared to an external hd.
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One random write over the entire hard drive should be enough to make any useful data unrecoverable. It seems to be enough in controlled studies, when the researchers know what they are looking for and where it is on the hard drive:
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=99520.msg699299#msg699299
It would be even harder for someone who doesn't know what is on the drive.
DBAN does three writes, two of random data and the last one is a zero write to make it look like the hard drive was not secure erased.
That's the recommend tool for this job.
http://dban.org
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Astor, I'm reading that DBAN doesn't work for SSD's. What do you think about the utilities mentioned in this article?
CLEARNET http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-20115106-285/how-to-securely-erase-an-ssd-drive/
Are those preferable to doing FDE with Truecrypt to overwrite it (a few times?) before using it again?
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Or you can look up a software program called "Blancco." To sum it up it basically ensures that your data is completely erased without a trace. You have to pay for it but it can be found via torrent.
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wiggum, I don't have experience with those, so I can't say.
It's a good reason to use full disk / volume encryption before you store any sensitive data. If something catastrophic happens, like you are raided, you won't have time to overwrite your storage media, and when everything is encrypted to begin with, you only have to overwrite the encryption key to make the data unrecoverable.
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All good stuff, thanks guys. I will begin looking more into all that... I don't have $75 for a couple months :) I doubt I have anything to worry about...
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Securely erasing data off a SSD may be impossible, depending on the specific model. ATA secure erase works to securely wipe data from some SSDs, but others have not implemented it properly and it fails to work. There was a paper released a while ago where the researchers analyzed ATA secure erase on about a dozen different solid state drives, it worked on a percentage of them and failed on the rest.
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Or you can look up a software program called "Blancco." To sum it up it basically ensures that your data is completely erased without a trace. You have to pay for it but it can be found via torrent.
Eraser is one of the best secure deletion program and is open source (and free). You should always favor open-source programs.
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Thanks tree. Wish there was a way to "see what they see" and delete everything. Curious how the files appear. Seems that programmers would have figured out a way to do basically anything to do with completely erasing drives. Everyone's a pirate nowadays...a big reason to want to remove traces.
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Thanks tree. Wish there was a way to "see what they see" and delete everything. Curious how the files appear. Seems that programmers would have figured out a way to do basically anything to do with completely erasing drives. Everyone's a pirate nowadays...a big reason to want to remove traces.
Eraser is really good to do things like wipe free space or securely erase single files but it won't be able to wipe your entire hard drive though, you should use DBAN for that. Eraser can wipe drives that don't have your OS on it though.
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There is currently no official way of securely erasing a ssd, the only authorized way of getting rid of the data is to destroy the drive.
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I dunno about SSD's. But if you use TrueCrypt to encrypt your drive, and have a long (12+) password that is random (not dictionary breakable) you will probably be ok,
I absolutely go for the above poster who writes 'go with open source'. It's the only way to be reasonably sure that the code is good. (Good for security)
Stick with the proven models (I know TrueCrypt is good) and realize it's most probably other errors (like social engineering) that will enable your drive to be read. There are a few things out there that overwrite your drive, I (also) have heard that more than one or two times (overwritten) is wasted.
I dunno if you already know this, but if anybody has (physical) access to your drive (fed's can break in where you can't tell) and install either a hardware or software key logger. Then of course all plans using anything is no good, they will get your password, etc.
Almost enough for somebody to hid cameras around your PC, and have them upload to the internet. (recently a LE raid on medical marijuana location uploaded their cams to the internet, and the cops broke in and a guy reached up and broke the camera (which was visible) but it was already uploaded to the internet and they (the cops) couldn't deny the facts.
If you had this 'spy cam' protection, you could check out your site on the web where your video is uploaded (with secure password) and see if anybody was there.
If all the details were worked out prior to this scenario, seems you ought to be pretty well off.
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awesome thanks for the 411 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)