Wasn't there a program used to fill your old hdd with random gibberish to make the old info unrecoverable? I don't remember the name
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DBAN, and there are plenty of others.
One pass is kinda enough, but a few more is always a nice bonus. It's not so much how many passes as how good they are and where.
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Ccleaner 35 Passes {Gutmann}
The NSA Erasing Standard is 7 passes.
The military Grade Standard is Gutmann 35 Passes
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my anti-virus software is tekking me that's a not trustworthy website.
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Does it tell you why ? Cause there are more probabilities of your anti virus being crap than of that website being infected. Might be a self signed CA.
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This Connection is Untrusted
You have asked Firefox to connect securely to www.anti-forensics.com, but we can't confirm that your connection is secure.
Normally, when you try to connect securely, sites will present trusted identification to prove that you are going to the right place. However, this site's identity can't be verified.
What Should I Do?
If you usually connect to this site without problems, this error could mean that someone is trying to impersonate the site, and you shouldn't continue.
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It's not your antivirus, it's firefox, and yes it's a self signed CA. Websites use certificates that are delivered by private companies ( or "authorities" ) to identify themselves, however they are ar from being as trustworthy as they are supposed to be since both the NSA and hackers can let's say pretend to be it/intercept it ( i simplify a lot ), therefore nowadays most private independant security-oriented websites tend to make their own certificates. This is what triggers the "untrusted", aka "this certificate is self hosted and not recognized by a big company". Just click on proceed anyway or accept certificate or something like that, it's all clean and good.
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That article ignores how flash drives work internally. If you really want all of your data to be destroyed on a memory stick or SSD drive, one pass is not enough. Internally these drives have a bit more storage place than what is shown to you, and the extra space is used for wear leveling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling). A single erase pass will leave a complete set of this extra space unharmed. Repeated erase passes will cause the extra blocks rotate in to the "shown" set, and thus get overwritten.
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Think if you've got someone's attention to the extent that you're worrying about how many times to erase your drives, it doesn't matter because they already got the information via your isp, or by installing a keylogger on your machine while you were at work. :)
But if you're talking about erasing drives before you get rid of them, I suggest a drill instead. :)
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hehe someone knows the deal with the ISP >_> those craps never get lost
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Its not, at all. Ive restored HDD information from drives that have been completely formated and rewritten to more than a couple times. This is using freely available software. You get a dedicated person using dedicated software and you would be SOL.
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Not to get too far off-topic, but if you're talking about a SSD, or a hybrid SSD + HDD there's no such thing as "completely wiped." :)
If a block can no longer be written the drive will use a different one (over-provisioning) and ordinary people like us won't be able to access the former contents, but whatever used to be there may well still be readable with the proper tools.
Were your passwords ever in a block that went bad, and the drive silently copied the contents to a different, working block? Who knows! Would the drive manufacturer (or anyone who paid them enough money to learn how) still be able to access all those bad blocks? Who knows! Are you or your passwords important enough for anyone to try? :) Who knows! :)
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Scammers who want information of yours have far more effective means to obtain that information.
Though what is actually more effective would be to replace your stuff with something else. The way file systems work in windows, when you delete something it just deletes the part of the file table that says the file is there and it is considered free space. If something else is written in the spot then it's gone. So delete you stuff, make copies of something that doesn't have personal info in it (like find a free game download and copy it's folder numerous times) until the hard drive is full again. Then format.
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I throw it into a lake of fire, it doesn't go to heaven where the angels fly.
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One pass is more than enough. Though if you want to be on the safe side, do it twice like I did. Dad decided to donate our old PC to my uncle's company and I was worried about someone managing to get access to any stored passwords in the HDD, So cleaned the HDD in 2 pass and it worked just fine.
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lol ... no ... That was the family PC ..... "pr0n" as you say was safely stored in my personal laptop for quick and easy access to said fapping materials :D
Parents had the habit of storing passwords in a text file so that they can check them if they forget. wouldn't listen to my warnings and actually tried to give the PC away without cleaning the HDD. They said they deleted it so everything was fine. Luckily I was home for vacation from Uni and managed to get it cleaned before being given away.
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In a txt file? that's like one of the most unsafe ways to store passwords! o.O
If they really have to write it down, get them to write down on a piece of paper and keep close to computer. (If you know you and your family are the only ones using the pc).
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I've read somewhere that the probability of restoring a bit overwritten 1 time is ~52%. So dd your whole HDD with urandom and you are safe.
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Actually there is almost 87% chance of recovering a single bit.
Translates as 33% chance of recovering single byte (or character).
And 0.3% chance of recovering five letter word (english, other languages may have multibyte characters and smaller chance).
0.87^(1024^4 * 8) = 0.87^8796093022208 chance of recovering one terabyte. :P
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http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_with-errata.pdf
Once is enough for most modern HDDs.
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Hdd low level format.
Set it to write zeros, 2 pases should enough.
This will take alot of time, but it's worth it when dealing with sensitive information.
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One format is all you need. Second one nothing change. HDD works like: Nothing is really deleted - removed. All is only marked as free space and is possible to restore everything - it is "fast format" option. (If you choose complete format all infos will be erased - still possible to restore some fragments) Marked as free space will be replaced only as new information. If you are hacker and want to hide everything from CIA and FBI you have to format and completelly fill your HDD by harmless files at least 5 times and no technician will ever get any of your vacation photos :D
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Depending on what you are using, such as windows format, you can EASILY sniff out the data. If you have any data that you want to keep secure on a HDD you need multiple passes of all 0's and 1's for a secure erase. Ive restored old information that was deleted and rewritten on top of a few times using free consumer level software.
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I usually do it once, though if the HDD had important stuff on it, I would usually just do it one more time.
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seven passes of 0 filling your hdd will make it irretrievable for almost anyone including most government agencies i have been told by people in digital security. most formats simply tell the folder tree to not be a folder tree anymore but actually do nothing about erasing the data. essentially leaving all the ones and zeros in place on your hdd so with a recovery program you can read them all and using pattern recognition algorithms find most if not all your files. zero filling however actually blanks out your drive. multiple passes of zero filling eliminates almost all residual traces of data that was once written to each bit.
if you are so worried about it, i would simply physically destroy the drive and pay the 50 bucks to buy a new better blank one to replace it. issue solved.
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What he is trying to say is that "filling with 1" actually means to give files a fake deleted state. In fact, all the old files remain written but the HDD will overwrite them as they don't exist. I was using this method by manually deleting files from the registry (a file from c:\windows, can't remember the name) to "trash" large files or to "hide" data.
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Consumers can recover files that have been deleted, but not written over (data is still all there) high end lab equipment can do a lot better (like telling the different between a 1 bit that was overwritten by a 1 from one that was overwritten by a 0). Remember, the actual storage devise is analogue, and technically no data is ever lost, you just need a more precise measuring devise, and a better algorithm. You could overwrite an SSD 100 times, smash it with a hammer, and put that in a blender, and technically it is still possible to recover all the files it ever stored.
From what I have heard, 6-8 is the recommended number of times, but unless this is a drive you are throwing out I would never do it for an entire drive without a very good reason. But at the same time, unless you are an international criminal, I do not think the law enforcement are likely to send your hard drive to a lab, but I could be wrong.
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I never worked on Pawn, but yes that is me.
The game is back up on Blank's new website, http://www.sandboxd.com/
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That only makes it impossible to yourself to access any data.
Taking a look at the platters itself it is of course possible to "rebuild" the data even after a head-crash.
So simply "smashing" it so the PC is not able to recognize the harddisc as such is NOT a safe way to clean real sensitive data!
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How sensitive are we talking here? I don't know any state secrets or have child porn. I don;t think any government agency or private individual is going to be reassembling a hard drive covered in metallic dust and broken shards of plastic to read my thousands of 'Friends' fan fiction or check my detailed work accounts.
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I haven't needed to nuke my HDD yet
When I really do, I'll do 7 passes, then run a magnet over it, then force a head crash by running it in a vacuum chamber, then I'll drill three holes in it, smash it, and set it on fire by placing in a bag of saltpeter aka stump remover.
That ought to work.
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Acid in real life isn't like acid in games and movies, it doesn't magically dissolve everything put in it
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If you REALLY need to be safe 7 passes is enough, if you won't need that HD anymore using a strong magnet will do the trick. Those who keep saying that 1 pass is enough don't know how easy is to retrieve data, even without proper equipment. I once restored about 65% of a formatted HD just by using Recuva, and that was a "complete" format.
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As far as I know, one pass is all you need, any more is simply overkill, but feel free to tell me I'm wrong :)
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