Re:Kanagawa government hard disks swiped, sold online
by hvidgaard on Friday December 06, 2019 @08:33AM
(#21721593)
I don't think anyone have ever demonstrated the ability to recover data after a few overwrites on any modern harddisk. The entire concept of "residual" magnetism that you can reliably measure sounds ridicules to an engineer.
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Re:Kanagawa government hard disks swiped, sold online
by michaelt on Friday December 06, 2019 @10:16AM
(#21722467)
AFAIK no-one has ever demonstrated the ability to recover data after a single overwrite. Someone offered a prize for such recovery, back in 2008 [1] which was never claimed (although the prize was only of symbolic value).
Re:Kanagawa government hard disks swiped, sold online
by squarefoot on Saturday December 07, 2019 @12:44PM
(#21731495)
I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but if I was a 3 letter agency with infinite resources (so also no need to claim any prizes, no matter how much tempting they can be) and succeeded in recovering data that way, I would never tell anyone. Doing so would reveal what I can do, and by extension send the message "next time do a multiple pass wipe" which in the end would reveal what I cannot do.
Re:Kanagawa government hard disks swiped, sold online
by hvidgaard on Monday December 09, 2019 @03:23AM
(#21741144)
Considering that brilliant physicists and engineers have private access to state of the art technology, I find it highly unlikely that NSA/FBI/CIA/??? have figured out how to do this, but no one else have.