data shredder

[Rashkae]

Steve Flynn wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 1:36 PM, Amedee Van Gasse (ub)
> <amedee-ubuntu at amedee.be> wrote:
> 
>> Can you name a few of those forensics softwares? + documentation about how
>> they actually work and what the conditions are to get usable results?
>> Preferably something recent, not some outdated standards published by the
>> USA government (I don't trust foreign governments on that subject, I don't
>> even trust my own government).
> 
> In the news recently - COFEE (Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor)
> 
> http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=coffee+forensic+tool should get you
> started... you can easily find it on the Torrent sites.
> 

Coffee is not even close to being able to recover data that's been
overwritten, even by a single pass of zeros.   Even in theory,
recovering that kind of data would require removing the platter from the
hard drive and carefully scanning the surface with some star trek
sounding gizmo microscope, then using software to make a 'best guess'
about the contents, (not that tricky if the data was written once to a
pristine drive then overwritten once with zeros, but that's a best case
scenario for recovery.)