Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: romford on June 30, 2012, 02:09 pm
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I am finally ready to implement my new secure silk road setup but need to wipe my current HDDs. What is the best way to do this? I have heard DBAN mentioned on here before but is that enough?
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DBAN is a pretty good piece of software. If you plan on reusing the hard disk after wiping, only one pass of pseudorandom data should suffice. After that you can reinstall the operating system and continue using your PC. If you want to be extra secure (or you plan on disposing of the hard drive), you can have DBAN run with the standard configuration of 3 passes.
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Dunno how good it is but ive used acronis disk cleanser, there are various options. I think the fastest on a 1TB hdd was 4 hours, the others are safer but take longer.
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Securely wiping a HDD is easy
x=1
while [ $x -le 25 ]
do
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hd?
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hd?
done
drop it into a script, set the /dev/hd ID, start it running, and walk away. When it is done, the drive is wiped.
Though I have found the best way to wipe a HDD is with a 3lb sledge hammer and a bucket of water. Assuming you want the data gone and dont care about the drive.
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more than one pass is pointless
This is absolutely true as long as the disk remains in your possession and you continue using it after a wipe.
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Securely wiping a HDD is easy
x=1
while [ $x -le 25 ]
do
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hd?
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hd?
done
drop it into a script, set the /dev/hd ID, start it running, and walk away. When it is done, the drive is wiped.
Though I have found the best way to wipe a HDD is with a 3lb sledge hammer and a bucket of water. Assuming you want the data gone and dont care about the drive.
Spin stand microscopy can pull data off of very shattered platters.
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Though I have found the best way to wipe a HDD is with a 3lb sledge hammer and a bucket of water. Assuming you want the data gone and dont care about the drive.
Spin stand microscopy can pull data off of very shattered platters.
If you want to go that far, shred them (there are machines for this) and then melt the platters.
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If you want to go that far, shred them (there are machines for this) and then melt the platters.
Or your BBQ.
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If you want to go that far, shred them (there are machines for this) and then melt the platters.
Or your BBQ.
The BBQ would have to raise the temperature of the platters above the Curie point. The Curie point for iron oxide (Fe2O3) is approximately 622 C, or about 1150 F.
To the best of my knowledge, no BBQ ever achieves a temperature that high.
Guru
OK. I will burn them. Is that safe if I use a gallon of gas. What would you rate the recover process would be of that? NOTHING.
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Only sure way would be take the HD to the river and toss or open and take the magnet which is a bit hard to do but fun to throw on your refrigerator ;o). Feels like spider man throwing a spidey tracer on the back of hobgoblins back or something haha. Anyways, they use heavy magnetic pull to leech your information off a low level formatted hd so if you got serious big time info there beat it once a part with a sldge hammer, burn it with some high temp fluid. Do not use gasoline. then thoss it in the river. Unless you got a good old fashioned blow torch you can make yourself a door stop.
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Every security thread turns into a "i know more than you thread" or a "my dick is bigger thread"
Fucking nerds...jk
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Exactly Guru!
and I do not think any of us here 9MOST PROBABLY) post with the intention of trying to look smarter or more intelligent/informed than anyone else.
truly intelligent people know their limitations and welcome advice and knowledge from others.
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Every security thread turns into a "i know more than you thread" or a "my dick is bigger thread"
Fucking nerds...jk
Please don't knock nerds... if it weren't for nerds, this place (and a lot of the tools to keep us all safe) wouldn't exist.
Guru
K+ to you Guru for that one.. I'm not a nerd, but I do acknowledge who puts this website up and running. Also the security provided. mad respect.
Long live IT experts not doing the "devils work"
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I wondered whether a single random write was really enough, so I did this experiment myself. I booted a Linux live CD and ran dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda. At 5 mb/s it took about 27 hours to write over a 500 gb hard drive. Then I reinstalled the OS and ran a program called PhotoRec, which scans the free space and dumps anything in finds (not just photos) into a folder of your choosing. It found some system files that appeared to have been deleted after the OS was resinstalled. It didn't find a single file that had obviously existed before the disk wipe. I had thousands of photos and mp3s on the drive before and it didn't find a single one of those.
The FBI and NSA might have forensic technology that's much better than this app, but I doubt it. I don't think the data is magically "watermarked" into the drive. A single random write flips the bits and it's gone.
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It seems like a single pass is indeed enough but if you don't get the track edges there could still be residual data so you need to use a wiping system that can put the head off track center by some degree and do a two pass wipe (one on center and one off to get residual data)
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Why not encrypt your whole disk and then use DBAN to wipe it. Any data that is recoverable will be encrypted. :D
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Why not encrypt your whole disk and then use DBAN to wipe it. Any data that is recoverable will be encrypted. :D
If your drive is already encrypted, then there's no reason to wipe it. The use case here is if you started doing "sensitive" things before employing FDE. In that case you should get an external hard drive, fully encrypt it, back up your data, then wipe the internal hard drive and copy your data back. I used dd instead of DBAN because I wasn't sure if DBAN did anything special and I wanted to know what a pure, straight random write would do. It appears to be sufficient.
For the record, if you want to go this route, the full command was
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1M
I did it without defining the block size and it ran at 3.6 mb/s, probably because it used a smaller default block size. Setting it to 1 mb increased the write speed to 5.0 mb/s. You might get even better results with a larger block size.
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If I had anything at all on a hard drive that would get me some serious time I would not do anything short of take a blow torch to it. I sure would not trust any software to do it.
The Gov has software the public does not even know exist or hat they are capable of doing. It is only in the Governments best interest to have a hole card up it's sleeve.
At any rate why risk/chance it? Just utterly destroy it and there you have it.
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If I had anything at all on a hard drive that would get me some serious time I would not do anything short of take a blow torch to it. I sure would not trust any software to do it.
The Gov has software the public does not even know exist or hat they are capable of doing. It is only in the Governments best interest to have a hole card up it's sleeve.
At any rate why risk/chance it? Just utterly destroy it and there you have it.
Wiping is your best bet , it is equal to using a strong magnet on it.
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If I had anything at all on a hard drive that would get me some serious time I would not do anything short of take a blow torch to it. I sure would not trust any software to do it.
The Gov has software the public does not even know exist or hat they are capable of doing. It is only in the Governments best interest to have a hole card up it's sleeve.
At any rate why risk/chance it? Just utterly destroy it and there you have it.
The (US) gov't has more than just software that is unknown to the public. You know the NSA designs and produces its own custom chips, boards and anything else they think they need. Then they write custom software for their custom hardware.
What is it capable of? No fucking idea, but it's certainly impressive.