SANS ISC: Day 22 - Wiping Disks and Media

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InfoSec Handlers Diary Blog

The last couple days we talked about getting rid of rootkits, spyware, bots and such. One common suggestion was to "wipe and rebuild". There are other reasons to wipe disks: Are you donating an old computer to charity? Better get rid of that data first! What are your procedures and tricks to quickly and securely erase data. With > 1TB disks on the horizon, the time it takes to erase a disk with "Boot and Nuke" is getting longer and longer.

In particular:

• multiple overwrites? myth or necessity
• physical destruction? shredding? demagnetizing? sledge hammer?
• drive firmware: how do you validate it after a compromise?
• USB disks, SIM cards and other "exotic" media.
• what distance do you keep to the disk on the range to avoid lead backsplatter? ;-)

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Johannes B. Ullrich, Ph.D.
SANS Technology Institute