Data destruction. Poor mans solution

Scenario : you've got embarassing pictures of yourself, you've got pictures of special moments with your boyfriend or girlfriend, and tons of porn on your PC.

Problem : FBI is looking to get their dirty hands on your PC.

What do you do? You don't have enough money to buy shredding softwares (which are pretty darn effective!).

Why should you care?
Well you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't care. A simple hit on the "delete" button is not the solution. Anyone with the slightest PC knowledge can restore those files. We'll assume you're little smarter than that. You use "Shift+Del". Now this is little bit better since data is directly deleted without going to the trashcan. Still forensic softwares can recover them. Yes they can.
Some advanced ones can even recover even after you FORMAT the drive.

Solution : Here's a poor mans, almost as good as solution if you were shredding them.

Goal : You want to corrupt the data so that its irrecoverable.

step1 - change the extension to .TXT
step2 - now open the file with notepad or other text editors.
step3 - go wild. you're going to see bunch of gibberish when you open them. delete anything you want, middle, end, begining, delete significant portions. Feel free to enter some gibberish of your own.
step4 - when you're happy, close it. (now if you don't believe me, change back to the original extension, the file should now already be corrupted.) If it still works (well, almost) then redo from step1 again and delete even more and test it again.

but we don't want to take chances. So we'll do a few more things to save you from leaking your treasured pictures (or other files).

Now, if you give me a file called "file.ext" where .ext is the extension, and if you don't tell me, I have no idea what kind of file it is. Are you seeing where we're heading? Yup. Now you're going to do it. You're going to be evil and change the original extension to something less suspicous. Changing them to .exe seems good because their sizes vary much and won't cause much scrutiny.

So you're getting your hands dirty and changed the extension. Now we're almost done here. So now we'll do the trick everyone already knows, select the file, Shift+Delete and say bye bye.

Why is this effective?
- First we corrupted the data. Remember, programs can recover entire file, but they can't (in most cases) "fix" the data.
- We change extension. There are so many extensions out there. So if even someone else gets your files, but doesn't know what the extension is, they'll have a hard time. *evil grin*
- Finally we shiff+deleted.

That's the end of tutorial. Hope this helps.

 

The only way to effectively and permanently destroy the data on a hard drive is to remove the HD from the computer, undo the metal casing, score the discs all over before giving the discs a good going over with a blow torch, then a 16oz hammering followed by a good accelerant like petrol (gasoline), another burning session and followed by a drenching in superglue when it cools.

 

i was thinking if you took the hd out and used a really powerful magnet that would work but i think mcfox idea would be more fun

 

The only way a hard drive that is broken leaves my possession is after effective treatment as described. Maybe not the second burning part but definitely the scoring, hammering and superglueing.

 

I wonder what's in your hard-drive. lolz. I think ordinary user don't have to be that paranoid.

 

If you are that paranoid go and download a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/) and use one of the Hard Disk Wiping tools that comes on it. Heck run it a couple of times if you really want.

 

Now why would the FBI want someone's computer?
Only if that someone did something very bad!

I just do not worry about things like that.

 

Maybe he has KFC's original recipe in his My Documents?

 

Or get a magnet near it...

--- oh it was already suggested. Well you dont really need a really powerful one, its really delicate... but the more powerful the better yeah

 

Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a lot of personal data I didn't want to take any chances with. Since the HD didn't work (at least for me) and I was replacing it, overwriting with 1,0, software wasn't an option.
Old hard drives yield data bonanza - ZDNet - 2003

 

I saw on discovery that forensics can even recover from a CD broken in many pieces.

Anyways coming back to the topic, the file which you renamed is either .JPG, .jpg, .JPEG, .jpeg, .gif, .GIF, .png, .PNG, .psd, .zip, .rar i dont think it could be of any other format, and i think forensics are smart enough to know that.

Also, if you've a huge collection of images, as i have around 40k, i cannot rename every single file, i will have to create a zip file of them and then rename it, so if i change zip files extension, it could easily be renamed to .zip again and recovered.

 

Just remove the hard drive from it's casing and place it in a agressive acid that will disolve it.

Works for the military so why not for the common civilian?

Sensitive military hard drives that have the possibility to be seized by an agressor can be dropped in a acid bath at the push of a button and resulting in a useless piece of material for the ''enemy''.

Anyhow so i read this in a article once magnets are effective but not as good as you think. Specialized recovery software not obtainable by the ordinary citizen can recover this even after a magnet swipe, no matter how strong.

You would have to destroy it!

 

That's my understanding as well. That magnets aren't as effective as you may think. Can't say I'm bothered about the authorities, I just don't want to leave my data wide open for some scam artist to plunder.

 

There are much better methods and technologies. Any data wipe software will do, feely available on internet. To do manually would take deleting the file, then recreating a file of identical size (and hope that it saves in same folder and same spot on hard drive) totally made up of 1s (1111111.....) and then delete that file. Then recreating a file of identical size (and hope that it saves in same folder and same spot on hard drive) totally made up of 0s (000000000000.....) and then delete that file. Repeat. SEVEN times. IF your really don't want it recovered every. (text editor such as notepad only gets you so far; you would need disk editor and hexidecimal editior to do a thorough job).

in other words,....
Get disk/file wiping software.

However, if you want to get back to the file in future ever, encrypt. SAME goes for any emails. Every email sent over internet could be read by anyone at anytime anywhere.

 

why dont you just install linux on this harddisk, and then just reinstall windows? guess thats enought filesystem change to get rid of everything

 

If you have Windows, then just use Eraser... it adds an option to the Recycle Bin called "Erase Recycle Bin", plus you can set it up to go through you hard disk rewriting patterns of data every set time period. I use it because I'm paranoid, don't think I've got anything to hide but would rather not leave evidence should something happen:

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

 

oh wow what a brilliant method. Hopefully I can open & edit each of my hundreds, if not thousands, of files by hand with notepad before the FBI Swat team gets through the door. Real life saver.