L
Larry
Guest
TopPosted Because It Makes Sense In This Case:
Excellent information, John. Many thanks for taking the time to post
it.
-- Larry
On Sat, 19 Jun 2010 10:10:15 -0300, John John - MVP
wrote:
>Mike S wrote:
>> On 6/18/2010 7:10 AM, John John - MVP wrote:
>>>
>>> Mike S wrote:
>>>> On 6/18/2010 4:39 AM, John John - MVP wrote:
>>>>> Mike S wrote:
>>>>>> On 6/17/2010 11:10 AM, Db wrote:
>>>>>>> there are utilities that
>>>>>>> wipe the disk of deleted files.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> however, there are differing
>>>>>>> opinions whether wiping
>>>>>>> deleted files with something
>>>>>>> like military encryption
>>>>>>> is effective against
>>>>>>> hard drive forensics.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> my opinion and a old friend
>>>>>>> who is an m.i.t professor
>>>>>>> is that the only sure way that
>>>>>>> the contents on the disk are
>>>>>>> not retrievable is to toss the
>>>>>>> hard drive into a volcano or
>>>>>>> the middle of ocean in the
>>>>>>> middle of the night.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I saw a show on television that mentioned some very powerful forensic
>>>>>> software that could find the last two (that's right 2) sets of files
>>>>>> on a hdd that had been overwritten. That is you save file A, then you
>>>>>> overwrite it with file B. Then you overwrite that with file C. They
>>>>>> could recover B and A with extremely high rates of accuracy!!!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But most people do not have access to that software.
>>>>>
>>>>> Most people don't have access to that software because it just plain
>>>>> doesn't exist, it's nothing but BS!
>>>>>
>>>>> John
>>>>
>>>> And you know this how?
>>>
>>> You are the one who made the claim that there is some sort of 'magic'
>>> software available that can recover overwritten files, it is up to you
>>> to substantiate your claim and supply the name of the software and the
>>> company who makes this software. The leading forensic recovery software
>>> (EnCase) cannot do this and none of the major data recovery firms can do
>>> this, just call them and ask them and you will get the same answer from
>>> all of them. This idea that data could be recovered from overwritten
>>> drives was a theory advanced by Dr. Peter Gutmann and he himself has
>>> told me that his theory was misconstrued by many who read his paper, he
>>> was never able to recover overwritten files and he knows of no one who
>>> ever was.
>>> John
>>
>> I claimed that I saw this on a television show, that is true. They did
>> not mention the name of the software. Also the government often has
>> technology that is years ahead of what the public knows about. I have
>> not seen this at work but I now damage platters on drives I don't want
>> people to access anything from, and I advise the same to all of my friends.
>>
>> You also made a claim, that it doesn't exist, so how can you be
>> uncomfortable if someone asks you to back up your claim?
>
>For a period of about five years, on and off in my spare time, I did a
>lot of searching for this 'Holy Grail' of data recovery! Anytime that
>it would appear that promising information was about to be found it
>always came down to the same thing; quotes from or claims made on the
>basis of Dr, Gutmann's paper or hearsay about conspiracies and
>government secrets! I found out that the one thing in common that any
>who claimed that this was possible have is that none of them could give
>hard evidence or give us the name of anyone or any company who could
>actually do it, classic hallmarks of urban myths!
>
>After countless hours of futile searching for this data recovery Grail I
>decided to ask persons and companies in the know about data recovery, I
>started e-mailing and calling those who I thought would be able to
>provide real answers. I contacted at least 10 different data recovery
>companies, some who make data recovery software and some who run clean
>room data recovery. All of them told me the same thing, they cannot
>recover overwritten data. Quoting from an email from one of the major
>firms: "It is nothing but a theory at best, add secret government
>capabilities and the theory has now entered the realm of urban legends".
>
>The claim that governments have tools to do this is often used to
>bolster the myth but it is interesting to note that in his 2004 paper,
>Recovering Unrecoverable Data - The Need for Drive-Independant Data
>Recovery, Charles H. Sobey wrote:
>
>"It is very telling that the US Department of Defense's Combating
>Terrorism Technology Support Office placed a "Broad Agency
>Announcement" seeking just such a [magic] machine for damaged, erased,
>or overwritten media."
>
>The DoD's request went unanswered, no one took them up on it. In a
>telephone conversation I posed the question about the DoD's request to
>an engineer at Seagate. The engineer chuckled and said that while he
>was not privy to any information about these kind of projects within his
>company he nonetheless felt that to undertake the request would have
>been an exercise in futility.
>
>Finally, after all of the data recovery and hard disk manufacturers that
>I had contacted told me that it was impossible to recover overwritten
>data I decided to ask Dr. Gutmann himself about it. His answers to me
>confirmed the urban myth status of the whole thing.
>
>You can read Charles H. Sobey's paper here:
>
>ActionFront Research
>Recovering Unrecoverable Data - The Need for Drive-Independant Data Recovery
>http://www.actionfront.com/ts_whitepaper.aspx
>
>Dr. Gutmann's paper is available here:
>http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html
>
>
>More on the subject in these links:
>
>Data Removal and Erasure from Hard Disk Drives
>http://www.actionfront.com/ts_dataremoval.aspx#Overwriting
>
>Overwritten data: Why even the Secret Service can't get it back
>http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/5756
>
>Is overwritten data really unrecoverable?
>http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/5687
>
>Can Intelligence Agencies Read Overwritten Data?
>http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-guttman.html
>
>Researchers Prove Single Pass Overwrite Effective
>https://infosecurity.us/?p=5474
>
>John
Excellent information, John. Many thanks for taking the time to post
it.
-- Larry
On Sat, 19 Jun 2010 10:10:15 -0300, John John - MVP
wrote:
>Mike S wrote:
>> On 6/18/2010 7:10 AM, John John - MVP wrote:
>>>
>>> Mike S wrote:
>>>> On 6/18/2010 4:39 AM, John John - MVP wrote:
>>>>> Mike S wrote:
>>>>>> On 6/17/2010 11:10 AM, Db wrote:
>>>>>>> there are utilities that
>>>>>>> wipe the disk of deleted files.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> however, there are differing
>>>>>>> opinions whether wiping
>>>>>>> deleted files with something
>>>>>>> like military encryption
>>>>>>> is effective against
>>>>>>> hard drive forensics.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> my opinion and a old friend
>>>>>>> who is an m.i.t professor
>>>>>>> is that the only sure way that
>>>>>>> the contents on the disk are
>>>>>>> not retrievable is to toss the
>>>>>>> hard drive into a volcano or
>>>>>>> the middle of ocean in the
>>>>>>> middle of the night.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I saw a show on television that mentioned some very powerful forensic
>>>>>> software that could find the last two (that's right 2) sets of files
>>>>>> on a hdd that had been overwritten. That is you save file A, then you
>>>>>> overwrite it with file B. Then you overwrite that with file C. They
>>>>>> could recover B and A with extremely high rates of accuracy!!!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But most people do not have access to that software.
>>>>>
>>>>> Most people don't have access to that software because it just plain
>>>>> doesn't exist, it's nothing but BS!
>>>>>
>>>>> John
>>>>
>>>> And you know this how?
>>>
>>> You are the one who made the claim that there is some sort of 'magic'
>>> software available that can recover overwritten files, it is up to you
>>> to substantiate your claim and supply the name of the software and the
>>> company who makes this software. The leading forensic recovery software
>>> (EnCase) cannot do this and none of the major data recovery firms can do
>>> this, just call them and ask them and you will get the same answer from
>>> all of them. This idea that data could be recovered from overwritten
>>> drives was a theory advanced by Dr. Peter Gutmann and he himself has
>>> told me that his theory was misconstrued by many who read his paper, he
>>> was never able to recover overwritten files and he knows of no one who
>>> ever was.
>>> John
>>
>> I claimed that I saw this on a television show, that is true. They did
>> not mention the name of the software. Also the government often has
>> technology that is years ahead of what the public knows about. I have
>> not seen this at work but I now damage platters on drives I don't want
>> people to access anything from, and I advise the same to all of my friends.
>>
>> You also made a claim, that it doesn't exist, so how can you be
>> uncomfortable if someone asks you to back up your claim?
>
>For a period of about five years, on and off in my spare time, I did a
>lot of searching for this 'Holy Grail' of data recovery! Anytime that
>it would appear that promising information was about to be found it
>always came down to the same thing; quotes from or claims made on the
>basis of Dr, Gutmann's paper or hearsay about conspiracies and
>government secrets! I found out that the one thing in common that any
>who claimed that this was possible have is that none of them could give
>hard evidence or give us the name of anyone or any company who could
>actually do it, classic hallmarks of urban myths!
>
>After countless hours of futile searching for this data recovery Grail I
>decided to ask persons and companies in the know about data recovery, I
>started e-mailing and calling those who I thought would be able to
>provide real answers. I contacted at least 10 different data recovery
>companies, some who make data recovery software and some who run clean
>room data recovery. All of them told me the same thing, they cannot
>recover overwritten data. Quoting from an email from one of the major
>firms: "It is nothing but a theory at best, add secret government
>capabilities and the theory has now entered the realm of urban legends".
>
>The claim that governments have tools to do this is often used to
>bolster the myth but it is interesting to note that in his 2004 paper,
>Recovering Unrecoverable Data - The Need for Drive-Independant Data
>Recovery, Charles H. Sobey wrote:
>
>"It is very telling that the US Department of Defense's Combating
>Terrorism Technology Support Office placed a "Broad Agency
>Announcement" seeking just such a [magic] machine for damaged, erased,
>or overwritten media."
>
>The DoD's request went unanswered, no one took them up on it. In a
>telephone conversation I posed the question about the DoD's request to
>an engineer at Seagate. The engineer chuckled and said that while he
>was not privy to any information about these kind of projects within his
>company he nonetheless felt that to undertake the request would have
>been an exercise in futility.
>
>Finally, after all of the data recovery and hard disk manufacturers that
>I had contacted told me that it was impossible to recover overwritten
>data I decided to ask Dr. Gutmann himself about it. His answers to me
>confirmed the urban myth status of the whole thing.
>
>You can read Charles H. Sobey's paper here:
>
>ActionFront Research
>Recovering Unrecoverable Data - The Need for Drive-Independant Data Recovery
>http://www.actionfront.com/ts_whitepaper.aspx
>
>Dr. Gutmann's paper is available here:
>http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html
>
>
>More on the subject in these links:
>
>Data Removal and Erasure from Hard Disk Drives
>http://www.actionfront.com/ts_dataremoval.aspx#Overwriting
>
>Overwritten data: Why even the Secret Service can't get it back
>http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/5756
>
>Is overwritten data really unrecoverable?
>http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/5687
>
>Can Intelligence Agencies Read Overwritten Data?
>http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/overwritten-data-guttman.html
>
>Researchers Prove Single Pass Overwrite Effective
>https://infosecurity.us/?p=5474
>
>John
