[EMCguy]

Back in the 1930's, Whitaker Chambers was working as a spy for the Soviet Union. He broke with the Soviets in disgust when Hitler and Stalin signed a peace treaty, enabling Hitler to rape Poland and France.

Since he knew that the Soviets had no inhibitions about killing their ex-spys, he made microfilm copies of sensitive documents detailing Soviet spies and operations in the US, and warned his handlers that the information would be given to US authorities if anything unfortunate happened to him.

By the mid fifties he realized just how horrible the Soviet Communists were and he began cooperating with US authorities. Once he started cooperating, he began noticing breakins and surveillance at his country home, with Soviet agents trying get their hands on the incriminating evidence.

How did he manage to keep the microfilm hidden from the agents? He hid them in plain view, hiding them in a hollowed out pumpkin, in the middle of his pumpkin patch.

So if we want to find good hiding places for our confidential HD platters, first buy some pumpkin seeds, then........

EMCguy

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What about this?
Boo-Yeah

[Boo-Yeah]

What about this?
Boo-Yeah

[Michael]

All computer programs that destroy data only over write it. It dose not make it unrecoverable.

[RockyIV]

True very ture, but using the programs Boo-Yeah posted it is going to be quite hard for an avergae computer user to recover these files!

[cleverboy12]

so there's no need to really worry if youre tryin to destroy personel card details and that the only way to get it back is if someo of those people have those forensic details .

[RockyIV]

That depends on what program you use! If you use a normal, simple program there are programs you can get anti- programs that will get those files back! So it all depends on what you use!

[cleverboy12]

what is the F: drive may i ask because thats is what it encrypts !

[RockyIV]

What is F: Drive? It could be any driver on my new computer it is one of my HDD and on my old is was the external floppy-drive!

[zxSolidSnakexz]

I know there are several algorithms for doing HD overwrites. Does anyone know what they are? There was this one I've heard of that sounded German or Swiss that was supposed to use every randon charachter in binary form so that a data stipper would get confused between the layers. And, are these to be used before re-formatting? Or is it just a last resort when you need to despose of the drive?

In other on-topic talk, I recenly went to a computer recyling event, where you could take whatever people were throwing away. Now that sounds dangerous if what you say is right, I saw people just plopping down thier HPs. That was also the first time I've seen a motherboard used as a frisbee in ignorance.

Edited by zxSolidSnakexz, 23 August 2005 - 03:20 AM.

[RockyIV]

Well if you check the post Boo-Yeah posted, Im not saying it will work as I haven't tried it! It does something similar to what zxSolidSnakexz said! So im still waitong for a reply from WarriorScot on that nuke boot disks!

Edited by RockyIV, 23 August 2005 - 06:03 AM.

[dsenette]

What is Thermite? I have heard of it but don't know what it is.

thermite is one of the hottest burnng man made substances. it's basically the proper mixture of alluminum and iron ignited by a magnesium fuse. it burns so hot that you can't put it out with water because it will not only seperate the hydrogen and oxygen and cause an explosion...but whatever doesn't seperate will become superheated and expand enough to cause an explosion in and of itself. the only way to contain thermite is to bury it in sand....which doesnt stop the compustion....it just contains the heat...thereby turning the sand into glass.......it's fun stuff...you can melt through an engine block in 30 seconds

[RAz]

i was thinking about this too... i'm not an expert but from what i've learn at school i concluded that it has to do with the physical structure of the HDD... the orientation of the electrons(i think) on the magnetic sufrace gives the bits (1 or 0) -that is why if you place a magnet near a magnetic storage unit the data it's compromised(the magnet changes the orientation of the electrons) ... when you delete a file the O/S doesn't really delete it ... it just markes it as free space... and so you can recover the data... to realy delete a file you not only need to "delete" it
but actualy "rewrite" it (change the physical structure-the orientation of the electrons ) ... old systems had a feature called HDD Low Level Formating... i think that would completly delete the information on a HDD... i'm not sure but i think even the full format (not the quick one) would also do it... but the dissadvantage is that you lose all the information on your HDD ,not only the one you are trying to protect

oh and another intersting thing i found out with WIN XP (i don't know if it applies to other versions of Windows)... when you move a file (use the cut command)
on the same partition it doens't get "physicaly" moved ... Windows just changes it's "address"...

Edited by RAz, 23 August 2005 - 07:33 AM.

[dsenette]

low or high level formatting, and even degaussing doesnt completely remove the data...because the platters are so sensitive that they are actually marked by the magnetic media....therefore if you have strong enough eyes (read- electron microscope) then you can actually see these imprints on the platter and with the right software you can interperet these markings into parts of data..

[RAz]

i see... that's why the "wiping" programs rewrite the inforamtaion 20-30( or even more) times...
this could actualy work if you could "remark" the platers (make a "deeper" impresion)...

[dsenette]

right.......but.....without destroying the disk.....you cant really ever get enough data on the platter to mask the older stuff completely