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May 12th, 2002, 03:11 AM
#61
Short of completely melting or disintegrating the disk down, there's almost no way that you're going to be able to "destroy" a disk badly enough so that high-level government is not able to somehow ressurect the data that was on the drive. Even the "commercial" degaussers (often used to "erase" tapes and the like) aren't strong enough to destroy everything on a disk so that they can't ressurect it (but are good enough so that "common people" and public agencies have close to a snowball's chance in hell of getting it back) - these devices, from what I understand, are actually limited in their capabilities so-as to make it possible/easier for the government to still be able to read what was once on a tape or a drive.
The way I've had it explained to me in the past (or at least what I remember of it) is that you can think of your harddrive as being composed of tracks as wide as a 20 lane freeway... when the device is written to, a big-huge truck comes flying through there and writes the data along whatever path it takes along this microscopic path (ie. over many lanes of the "freeway," including and that "splashes out and hits the gutters" and similiar). As strange as it sounds, the heads of a drive don't actually ever really traverse the same path along the same track... and even formatting or "demagnetizing" a drive (or writing over it, for that mater) still leaves traces of what was once there. Certain agencies are capable of pulling apart the drive, piece-by-piece, and reassembling it to what it once was... and getting data off of that...
It's really pretty frightening when you think about it.
\"Windows has detected that a gnat has farted in the general vicinity. You must reboot for changes to take affect. Reboot now?\"
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May 12th, 2002, 03:15 AM
#62
Oh, and as far as crypto goes... the government here places limits on what you can reasonably use. Much like the degaussers, anyone want to hazard a guess as to why there's actually "a limit?"
And, myself... I've seen 128-bit plus keys broken in less time than it took me to write this message - I'd only guess that those special government agencies can probably break much stronger forms in similiar amounts of time.
\"Windows has detected that a gnat has farted in the general vicinity. You must reboot for changes to take affect. Reboot now?\"
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May 12th, 2002, 03:21 AM
#63
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May 12th, 2002, 03:48 AM
#64
Originally posted here by souleman
The last test I heard, the NSA had found a way to read information from sectors that had been rewritten to something like 10 times. If they are admitting this, then they can probably go back 12 to 15 times. You can get programs off the internet to completely erase files (even pgp has a wipe utility) that overwrite a deleted file anywhere from 1 to 24 times.
Well said Souleman... In about 1997 NSA could retrieve from six "overwrites" deep (X's & O's mostly but with random alphas thrown into the overwrite process) so i have no doubts the technology can go deeper now, especially with today's high grade hard drives compared to yesteryears, and the various places data is held besides where you think it is.....
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May 12th, 2002, 06:13 AM
#65
It sure is funny how a stupid thread like this gets so meny replys....
System_0verload
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May 15th, 2002, 06:16 AM
#66
http://www.attrition.org/gallery/computing/forum/tn/youarenot.gif.html
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June 6th, 2002, 12:34 PM
#67
Junior Member
if the FBI wanted your computer HD they wouldent even need to leave the ofice to get it.
to trully hid some thing from the FBI you need to not hook up to the internet with it.OR ELSE.
they can get everything they want and you wont even know they got it till they arrest you!!
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June 6th, 2002, 08:04 PM
#68
Junior Member
I KNOW THEY CAN DO ALOT BUT THEY ARE ASKING CONGRESS FOR ALOT MORE. THIS WAS HOW 911 AND THE WORLD TRADE CENTER WAS MISSED.....CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? BUT TODAY BEFORE THE SENATE INVESTAGTIVE COMITTEE THE FBI ANNOUNCED THAT THEY DID NOT HAVE COMPUTERS FOR THEIR AGENTS. C'MON EVERYONE LET'S ALL EMAIL THEM AND MAKE OUR WEB DESIGNER FAMOUS! AT WWW. FBI.GOV. I WOULD GO INTO A PANIC IF I WERE YOU ,,,,,,,,UNLES YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO PANIC ABOUT. IN WHICH CASE I WOULD GER RID OF MY HARD DRIVE IF YOU WANT HONEST ADVICE. I DO NOT SEE WELL AND USE CAPS I NEVER SCREAM IN PUBLIC OR PRIVATE AT ANYONE SO PLEASE DO NOT THINK THAT OK? PLEASE EMAIL ME FOR HELP IF YOU LIKE...?
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June 19th, 2002, 06:01 PM
#69
Yup. I have a friend who has had need in the past to request a data retrieval from the FBI. All they did was send it to a commercial data-recovery center! Techniques of today have the ability to retrieve data beyond 26 levels deep! The best way to truly protect your data is to
a) never store anything on your harddrive that isn't encrypted by 1024-bit encryption (os included)
b) drop your drive into an active volcano.
/* You are not expected to understand this. */
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June 19th, 2002, 06:22 PM
#70
Member
Still think pyshichal + chemichal force would do the trick
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