HD Nukes?
Hi there, everyone. Being the paranoid sod that I am, I was wondering if there were any software programs that were availiable that would pretty much nuke my PC, be it delete everything or force my machine to overheat and damage the HD beyond repair. Had a look at DBAN, but the process strikes me as sluggish. Any other reccomendations?
DeltaSum wrote: Hi there, everyone. Being the paranoid sod that I am, I was wondering if there were any software programs that were availiable that would pretty much nuke my PC, be it delete everything or force my machine to overheat and damage the HD beyond repair. Had a look at DBAN, but the process strikes me as sluggish. Any other reccomendations?
if you really were paranoid then you wouldnt have posted this thread and bought attention to yourself.
thermite the hard drive is my reccomendation; you cant recover much from a lump of melted iron. The downside is it will burn through just about anything you can get your hands on, not nice if you mum or something is watching tv directly under your computer when/if you do it.
alternatively if you meant the phrase "nuke my pc" to be literal then get a copy of this book link here!
how about shredding the harddrive w/ one of those hard drive shredding companies. if one of your 'rents or friends' parents works in a large company the company might have such a deal with a shredding company and do it for free. otherwise you could do a seven pass wipe and then a couple of times more with just 00000's and then microwave it. get creative!
umm… no. (Thermite?? WTF, have you tried using or making it?)
First, make sure you won't be held accountable for destroying anything.
Next, you might need to know how files/ data is stored on your system. How it is written, sorted, and deleted. If you want a quick fix, Google something like "data destruction" and download some tools. I don't have time now to look for you now, but there were at least 2 good articles on using open-source tools on HBH.
Make sure your computer is the only place you have that information. And maybe try to stay out of trouble, or at least out of things that will get you in trouble.
Well, for general knowledge, DBAN takes between 2-5 hours for modern hard drives. I doubt you can get it below an hour or so, which makes it impractical in tight situations.
When in doubt, blow up the hard drive; explosions fix everything. If you can't blow it up, melt it. If you can't melt it, encrypt everything with AES-256; that should be resilient enough for the next 5 years or so.
Umm… not if you encrypt the entire drive? :) There are tools to "discover" information that was previously there; computer forensics deals with such tools frequently. In fact, I seem to recall the Helix LiveCD as a popular forensics tool.
Wiping is, in theory, enough as long as you exceed the DoD established standard (7 passes of 0's and 1's, alternating). A later standard, established by someone's name whom I am unable to remember at the moment, suggested just over 20 successive writes and rewrites. There are a number of projects on Sourceforge that cater to this established standard. However, as forensic technique becomes very refined at a relatively rapid rate, this standard is likely to change, too (if it has not already).
When in doubt, destroy the drive. That is the only way to ensure it, and that doesn't mean primitive methods like throwing it at the ground or hitting it with a hammer. To ensure absolute destruction, you need heat or combustion. Period.
Solid, drive wide encryption is great here, but it's really easy to accidentally loose everything. I've you're looking for something like a 'oh sh*t, the FBI's at the door' switch, electromagnet's can be very effective.
Someone at hackaday recommended a 20ga shotgun shell, but I think that's excessive, and unreliable.
And the poet is right. Thermite may sound very fun. In practice, it is almost never the right answer.
Here's the hackaday thread http://www.hackaday.com/2007/12/25/holiday-hackit-automated-hard-drive-destruction/
Just runactive@killdisk from a floppy on it. It will destroy everthing rather quickly depending on your drive size, But if you get caught doing any of this you'll get charged with tampering with evidence. Sooo, I say just load another harddrive with windows and some pictures of stuff like your mom,little bro or sis. Pictures of disneyworld,Mickeymouse gay shit like. Then just swap the drives out and hide your real one that way if the Feds look at your computer then they'll be like WTF this kid is a dipshit not a hacker and leave you alone.