Old hard drives yield data bonanza

Daily Newsletters

Sign up to ZDNet UK's daily newsletter.

NEWS
Two Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate students have uncovered a treasure trove of personal and corporate information on used disk drives. Simson Garfinkel and Abbi Shelat, students at MIT's Laboratory of Computer Science, said Wednesday that they bought 158 disk drives for less than $1,000, or about £640, on the Web and at swap meets. Scavenging through the drives, they found more than 5,000 credit card numbers, medical reports, detailed personal and corporate financial information, and several gigabytes worth of personal email and pornography. Their findings, titled "Remembrance of Data Passed: A Study of Disk Sanitation", are being published in the January/February 2003 issue of IEEE Security and Privacy, a journal published by the IEEE Computer Society. The research indicates that the market for used hard drives is flooded with devices brimming with confidential information that could be exploited. Such data, for example, could be used to assume someone else's identity. "The industry has known this is a problem, but our contribution is to show the pervasiveness of the problem," Garfinkel said. "You pick up 10 drives on the used market and the chances are that three or four of them are going to have confidential information. That is astounding." Each year, as the storage capacity multiplies onto ever smaller spaces, old drives are replaced. More than 150 million disk drives were pulled from their primary service in 2002, up from 130 million in 2001, according to market research firm Dataquest. Garfinkel and Shelat found 129 of the 158 drives they acquired were still functional. Of these, the researchers found 28 drives in which little or no attempt was made to erase the information. On one drive, the pair found a year's worth of financial transactions. Shelat said the drive apparently came from an automatic teller machine in Illinois. "Right now there is no way to erase the information on the drive without plugging it in and spending dozens and dozens of minutes erasing it -- and that is an expensive process," Garfinkel said. "In many cases it is going to cost more to (cleanse) the drive than the drive is even worth." The pair found that most attempts to erase information from the drives before selling them were ineffectual. On many disks, the files that once resided in the "My Document" folder had been deleted but could easily be recovered using the "undelete" utility. Many computer users are unaware that deleting a file does not actually overwrite the blocks on the disk that hold that information. Even a reformatted drive is vulnerable. Although 60 percent of the drives had been formatted before being sold, the researchers noted that formatting does not fully sanitise a disk because Microsoft's Window's "format" command doesn't overwrite every block of data. "The format command just reads every block to make sure that they still work," explained Garfinkel. "To properly sanitise the hard drive, you need to overwrite every block." It was on one of these formatted drives that the pair found 5,000 credit card numbers. The students found that only 12 drives were properly sanitised. "Lots of people know it is important to clean drives before you repurpose them, but few people do it because it's hard to do," Garfinkel said.
Who's watching you? Get the latest on spy networks such as Echelon and Carnivore, as well as privacy issues for companies and individuals alike, at ZDNet UK's Privacy News Section. Let the editors know what you think in the Mailroom.

Post your comment

In order to post a comment you need to be registered and logged in.

You can also log in with Facebook. Log in or create your ZDNet UK account below

  • Login

Will not be displayed with your comment

By signing up for this service, you indicate that you agree to our Terms and Conditions and have read and understood our Privacy Policy. Questions about membership? Find the answers in the Community FAQ

Get ZDNet UK's daily newsletter

Enter your email address to sign up

ZDNet UK Live

bootlegger

Make that 13 people now - I got refused today at Manchester airport. I thought I was up to date on this legislation - I knew of the EU ruling from...

2 hours ago by bootlegger on UK airport body scans will not be opt out
tinycg

Don't forget to check out apps like GoodReader or SlideShark either, they're indispensible for people on the go in presentation situations. Best...

5 hours ago by tinycg on Four top iPad apps for people on the move
TerryRK

Well it seems there is something a number of us agree on. Why is the Ubuntu Unity launcher so ugly? I thought perhaps it was something to do with...

10 hours ago by TerryRK on A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint
Freebies202

Duplicate comments are not made intentionally. Its very good to know that now you are keeping check on this problem because sometimes a commenter...

19 hours ago by Freebies202 on Microsoft fixes blog comments, speeds up blogs with open source
kevinmchapman

"the very significant number of users" and "many (most) of us" - you have no evidence for these statements. It is a fact that most users are saying...

1 day ago by kevinmchapman on A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint
Marg Menzies Harrison

Another grammar faux pas is the improper use of "you". When sitting down down in a restaurant, for example, I get cringe when the waitress...

1 day ago by Marg Menzies Harrison via Facebook on 10 flagrant grammar mistakes that make you look stupid
zdnetukuser

And NOW, folks, for Canonical's next trick... Kubuntu is late. Here's a pencil. Draw your own conclusions. cf.:...

1 day ago by zdnetukuser on Linux Minterface
Moley

@kevinmchapman. The discussion here reflects the very significant number of users who really do like the traditional menu system and who wish to...

1 day ago by Moley on A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint
kevinmchapman

Er, no... It is an efficient means of finding the application/file/setting you need in one place. The icons are a simply a fallback for when you...

1 day ago by kevinmchapman on A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint
TerryRK

Isn't the provision of a text based search an admission by the developers that the mass of icons approach does not work? I don't need to use a...

1 day ago by TerryRK on A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint
kevinmchapman

"Unity and GNOME 3 both abandon the old text-based cascading menus in favour of a graphical icon-driven system." Point truly missed. Both use a...

1 day ago by kevinmchapman on A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint
TerryRK

whs001 - Thank you, I'm glad you liked the article. I absolutely agree with you on your first point. I should perhaps have made it clearer that...

1 day ago by TerryRK on A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint
Dennis Nilsson

If we allow corporate interest to dictate the way our government circumvents due process against foreign entities then we should accept the same...

1 day ago by Dennis Nilsson via Facebook on ACTA stumbles in Germany
GHar123

I totally dislike pirating of works, I fear that artists will be deterred from creating works if they think that they are going to get ripped off....

2 days ago by GHar123 on ACTA stumbles in Germany
JCB33

How dare film makers, artists or anybody that invests in creativity stop us pirating their works for free. I want to be able to walk into my local...

2 days ago by JCB33 on ACTA stumbles in Germany
Moley

@GrueMaster. I prefer horses for courses rather than one size fits all. I, and I suspect most other computer users, do not really wish to have...

2 days ago by Moley on A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint
greycynic

The product that scares me every time I have to use it is the Office 2007 version of Excel. The first bug that I found was applying the median...

2 days ago by greycynic on Ten flawed products that derail productivity
GrueMaster

Nice review and very informative. One thing I'd like to add (in reply to whs001's 1st question), the main reason to have the same interface from...

2 days ago by GrueMaster on A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint
Frederick Wrigley

I'be been using Mint 12 since the RC came out, and I am far more happy with the Cinnamon, the Mate, and, yes (with extensions), theGnome 3...

2 days ago by Frederick Wrigley via Facebook on A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint
bdantas

Excellent article. One small correction, though--although a fresh installation of Linux Mint 12 will, indeed, provide the user with a version of...

2 days ago by bdantas on A tale of two distros: Ubuntu and Linux Mint