Wiping Out Data

[Matthew Flaschen]

Jeffrey F. Bloss wrote:
> Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> 
>> Jeffrey F. Bloss wrote:
>>> I'd wager that dd fails in this context too, even if as Matt suggested
>>> you immediately recreate a file system on the "overwritten" device.
>> Well, that explains why dd is useless for this.  However, I
>> /recommended/ shred, which does work.
> 
> That's what I've always used, and it certainly does work better than
> dd. But just to beat the dead horse one more time, on journaling file
> systems

I'll do the same, and reiterate that filesystems are irrelevant when
you're operating at the device level.

> attacker's ability to recover data forensically it's still a crap shoot
> in my opinion. Degaussing is a better option if you can swing it

Definitely.

, but
> in the practical world the only truly secure way to keep data from being
> recovered is strong encryption... making the issue of physical recovery
> irrelevant.

Uh, no.   If the attacker gains permanent physical access to the drive
(e.g. after it's discarded), they have unlimited time to brute-force any
encryption.

Matthew Flaschen