Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: dmc002 on September 08, 2013, 04:46 am
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Ok so when I first stumbled upon this amazing site I was completely uninitiated in the ways of anonymity. Being such a noob I was not aware of the many ways to hide my activities. I used the tor browser directly from my desktop and had only one bitcoin wallet that was also downloaded directly to my desktop. I am now making the switch to a tails usb, but I realize there is a lot of incriminating evidence already saved into my computer's memory. So I was wondering how I could go about purging my system of any illegal activity. I know that there are programs that can be used to do some of this but as I am not sure as to their effectiveness. Does any one have any suggestions or advice to give me.
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the best program is a bucket of water and you throw the harddrives in it and start over with some new ones
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You can partition and reformat your hard drive. You'll need to re-install your OS, but at least any incriminating data will be permanently deleted.
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Lol it seems like it. But technically even then my hard drive would still have the information on it and it could be recovered. The water would just ruin my desktop not remove the information contained on the hard drive. So couldn't it just be dried out and another machine used to access my removed hard drive?
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You can partition and reformat your hard drive. You'll need to re-install your OS, but at least any incriminating data will be permanently deleted.
That's what I was thinking but I was looking for an easier way. I don't remember what it was but I've heard of a program that lets you select files from your system, deletes them like normal, and then writes over them multiple times to make it harder to recover the original data. Has anyone heard of this or is it just a pipe dream?
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I think partitioning and reformatting have become a lot easier than it used to be. I guess it also depends on which OS you're running. On linux it's super easy, you can probably do it with four seperate commands and you're ready to load the OS.
BTW- I haven't heard of that software before, but I wouldn't be surprised. People come up with all sorts of creative ways to accomplish anything with computers
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Wow every single person in this thread is giving horrible advice. Throwing your HD in a bucket of water doesn't accomplish jack shit. Reinstalling an OS doesn't accomplish much at all either, it only overwrites some data. To clean your drive you need to use Secure Erase, preferably followed by a single pass of random data from DBAN.
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You can download an iso of Darik's Boot and Nuke CD from www.dban.org which can securely wipe your hard disk (1 pass or multi with patterns), before whatever partitioning or reinstalling you plan to do.
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Wow every single person in this thread is giving horrible advice. Throwing your HD in a bucket of water doesn't accomplish jack shit. Reinstalling an OS doesn't accomplish much at all either, it only overwrites some data. To clean your drive you need to use Secure Erase, preferably followed by a single pass of random data from DBAN.
Partitioning and reformatting a hard drive doesn't earase all the data?
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Wow every single person in this thread is giving horrible advice. Throwing your HD in a bucket of water doesn't accomplish jack shit. Reinstalling an OS doesn't accomplish much at all either, it only overwrites some data. To clean your drive you need to use Secure Erase, preferably followed by a single pass of random data from DBAN.
Partitioning and reformatting a hard drive doesn't earase all the data?
Absolutely not. The disk has to be wiped. You can do this by hand with a tool like dd or use DBAN as mentioned earlier.
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That's funny, I've always thought it did. The DBAN site says data removal isn't guaranteed so I guess you'd be taking your chances with both. Maybe the best way is a hammer and a nail.
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That's funny, I've always thought it did. The DBAN site says data removal isn't guaranteed so I guess you'd be taking your chances with both. Maybe the best way is a hammer and a nail.
For most intents and purposes, removal is guaranteed if DBAN writes across the whole disk without any disk errors. It will remove data beyond the point it can be recovered by normal people without heaps of money and specialized hardware. Hard disks do periodically retire sectors from use and remap them from another area. Obviously, DBAN will not be able to wipe these small bits if they exist, but you can't normally read them back either. Also, these tiny areas will be few and far between and probably just have the tiniest scraps of data of no consequence. If you are the NSA or similar you'll have some way to examine these parts of the disk if you really want to. Also, if you only do a single pass of writing 0's to the disk, technically someone like the NSA probably has the means to analyze the magnetic properties of the disk and do a statistical analysis to figure out what data use to be there. But, DBAN can even try to protect against this with one of the multi-pass methods.
Realistically, when you are wiping your own disk, it is to prevent normal people from running some sort of recovery software or undeletion utility. And, DBAN will meet your needs in this case, because all the software-accessible parts of the disk will be erased by it.
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That's funny, I've always thought it did. The DBAN site says data removal isn't guaranteed so I guess you'd be taking your chances with both. Maybe the best way is a hammer and a nail.
For most intents and purposes, removal is guaranteed if DBAN writes across the whole disk without any disk errors. It will remove data beyond the point it can be recovered by normal people without heaps of money and specialized hardware. Hard disks do periodically retire sectors from use and remap them from another area. Obviously, DBAN will not be able to wipe these small bits if they exist, but you can't normally read them back either. Also, these tiny areas will be few and far between and probably just have the tiniest scraps of data of no consequence. If you are the NSA or similar you'll have some way to examine these parts of the disk if you really want to. Also, if you only do a single pass of writing 0's to the disk, technically someone like the NSA probably has the means to analyze the magnetic properties of the disk and do a statistical analysis to figure out what data use to be there. But, DBAN can even try to protect against this with one of the multi-pass methods.
Realistically, when you are wiping your own disk, it is to prevent normal people from running some sort of recovery software or undeletion utility. And, DBAN will meet your needs in this case, because all the software-accessible parts of the disk will be erased by it.
Good info man. Definitely learned something today and I'll remember DBAN if the need ever arises.
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Secure Erase is guaranteed to securely erase your drive, provided it is implemented correctly and nothing goes wrong anyway.