Laptops Give Up Secrets Easily

[CShine]

Hard drives that end up on eBay or other public auction blocks often contain a plethora of sensitive business and personal data that can be retrieved easily, according to a European I.T. security firm.

In a study on the lifecycle of laptops, Sweden-based Pointsec Mobile Technologies recently paid just US$10 at eBay for a hard disk containing sensitive information from one of Europe's leading financial-services groups, including current access codes, pension plans, customer databases, financial information and payroll records.

That drive was one of 100 disks and notebook PCs purchased as spare and used parts by Pointsec at Internet auction sites. Using common information retrieval software, the company discovered that it could obtain data on seven out of 10 hard disks that supposedly had been wiped clean or reformatted, company CEO Peter Larsson told NewsFactor.

"We were not surprised that the information was there, but we were surprised by the type of data left unprotected on the hard drives, Larsson said.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1211&e=5&u=/nf/20040609/tc_nf/24500&sid=95609565

[MsUnderstood]

1. Wow, but 2 reasons exist

1) The company did not encrypt the HD and it was stolen

2) The company sold the HD before fdisking the HD.

Either way it could have been prevented, but just imagine if it was VISA or Mastercard selling their wares on e-bay. . .what's in your wallet?

[nolabels]

2. Best to smash them things up

Info is have known to be extracted even after mulitple scrubs

But if you have a minor problem try the your local retailer or internet search for repair software

http://www.data-recovery-software.net/
(snip)
R-Studio is a family of powerful and cost-effective undelete and data recovery software. Empowered by the new unique data recovery technologies, it is the most comprehensive data recovery solution for recovery files from FAT12/16/32, NTFS, NTFS5 (created or updated by Windows 2000/XP/2003) and Ext2FS (LINUX file system) partitions. It functions on local and network disks, even if such partitions are formatted, damaged or deleted. Flexible parameter settings give you absolute control over data recovery.
(snip)

[corriger]

3. rstudio is quite an excellent data recovery app

[TahitiNut]

4. This stuff is VERY old news.

It's been well-known for 40 years that data is recoverable from scrapped rotating memory ... as well as tape, data cell, and all other magnetic storage media.

[mark0rama]

5. When one of my computers is ready for the scrap heap,

I pull the hard drive. The rest goes to my town's semiannual computer recycling event. As a result I have a box of about hard drives for which I've never found a satisfactory disposal method.

[Don_G]

6. This Might Help

How to clean and defragment your Hard Drive: http://www.datadocktorn.nu/us_frag1.php

[mark0rama]

7. Thanks!

By the time I retire a PC or swap in a new drive, the old drive is has been obsoleted by its now-too-small capacity, so I'd been trying to devise creative ways to destroy them.

This is much more practical!

[DS1]

8. lack of training is worse. yesterday I removed root C: shares from police

computers, including the dispatch server. they were sharing drives and folders to swap mp3s and make backups.

wrong answer, piggies :eyes: