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Interesting Discovery Involving Rented Servers
Edvard:
As for wiping a Windows system if you don't have a "fancy host", I guess the solution would be overwriting the MBR with a disk-wipe tool... should definitely be doable, but I don't know any that supports this off-the-shelf.
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Doesn't plain ol' fdisk do this?
If that doesn't work, just post your email to a disreputable website, turn off your anti-virus, and you'll get MBR-corrupting software delivered right to your inbox! :P
f0dder:
Oh, I didn't mean just overwriting the MBR, I meant "place a disk-wiping tool in the MBR bootstrap code" :)
40hz:
Doesn't plain ol' fdisk do this?
If that doesn't work, just post your email to a disreputable website, turn off your anti-virus, and you'll get MBR-corrupting software delivered right to your inbox! :P
-Edvard (May 01, 2009, 10:21 AM)
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40hz:
Personally, I wouldn't bother with anything but a simple single-pass wipe, which is good enough to prevent any software based recovery attempt.
-f0dder (May 01, 2009, 08:28 AM)
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Agree. A single-pass zero write should be more than sufficient.
A tech buddy of mine pointed me to this link: http://www.somacon.com/p336.php
Erase Disk Free Space Script
Use this script to erase all the free space on your disk drive by filling it with blank, zeroed files. The WSF script runs on Windows and is freeware licensed under GPL. Just copy it to the drive you want to fill up, and double-click on it.
This script is handy when you want to sell or give away an old flash or hard disk drive, and you want some certainty that files on the drive are not easily recoverable. First erase all the files on the drive, then run this script. After it finishes, all user-writeable areas of the disk will have been written over with zeroes. With a 7200 rpm drive, it takes approximately one hour to fill up one hundred gigabytes. Because it does not overwrite or delete any existing files, the script is safer to use for novices.
This script is useful for the casual Windows users who want to clear out their disk with minimal fuss. You should be transferring ownership of the drive to someone who is unlikely to attempt to recover files from the drive, and you should not have highly sensitive information on the disk.
If you need something more secure, try the freeware Eraser program. You can read the source code for more details. This script can also be used as a crude benchmark to measure the raw write speed of your disk. The Western Digital 7200 rpm drives on my system wrote the files at 32-36 MB/second.
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I can't vouch for it since I haven't tested it yet. But I did read through the script, and it does look like it's a workable solution. (Didn't spot anything malicious in it either - which is always a plus. ;D )
f0dder:
40hz: that probably works the same way as the SDelete SysInternals' tool - allocating a "damn big file", then a bunch of smaller files in an attempt to use all free space on the disk. The method isn't 100% perfect though, as a little filesystem metadata can be left intact. And of course there's the issue of wiping the registry, which can contain enough sensitive information...
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