Secure wiping insecure?

Discussion in 'privacy technology' started by SafetyFirst, Apr 11, 2008.

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  1. Pleonasm

    Pleonasm Registered Member

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    SafetyFirst, another observation for your consideration…

    • You have so many different erase utilities installed on your PC that there exists the possibility of an unexpected conflict among them. It might be wise to uninstall all of these erase utilities, and then install-test-uninstall each one in turn.
     
  2. SafetyFirst

    SafetyFirst Registered Member

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    Aaaargh, nightmare with EE continues... freezeouts, program crashes, system crashes, uninstallations, reinstallations, greyed out tabs, illegible characters, "bad type" errors... this program is driving me crazy! It worked perfectly for several days and then it started raising hell on my PC, uuuhh...

    EDIT: It was able even to screw up MRU-Blaster so I had to uninstal it too...
     
  3. caspian

    caspian Registered Member

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    OMFG that sucks!
     
  4. SafetyFirst

    SafetyFirst Registered Member

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    Latest news on Nerves Eliminator (or Ulcer Creator)...

    I found out it may be conflicting with PrivacyKeyboard. This was my first suspicion, but when I checked PK's Auto-detected modules list I saw that PK allowed ee.exe as it had digital certificate, and although PK blocked EE's GLC.temp during installation I allowed it manually. However, when I tried all possible combinations of programs running on my PC (enabling/disabling while EE is running), I noticed that EE seems to be fine only when I stop PrivacyKeyboard. We'll see...
     
  5. Pleonasm

    Pleonasm Registered Member

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    This is a good example of why it is wise to use an image backup utility (e.g., ShadowProtect Desktop by StorageCraft) – namely, it provides the ability to restore your PC to a previous, known good state in its entirety. When protected with an image backup, you can literally be “fearless” – willing to try anything on your PC, confident in the knowledge that if things don’t go well, your system can easily be restored.

    On a more general note, SafetyFirst, it seems that some of the odd results you have observed with erase utilities may in fact be due to conflicts among the numerous privacy/security applications installed on your PC. Please continue your explorations, and let us all know what you discover.
     
  6. rookieman

    rookieman Registered Member

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    Has anyone used WindowWasher for cleaning their hdds?I've got the program and i've never used it for this.Cleaning free space that is.:(
     
  7. SafetyFirst

    SafetyFirst Registered Member

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    Sorry for the delayed answer.

    As I understand it with my limited knowledge of Windows structure, it looks like that EE managed to find "images" (?) of previously erased URLs in C:/Documents and Settings/SysAdmin/Application Data/Opera/Opera/profile/images

    Robin Hood answered with an email pointing me to their FAQ and Knowledge base.
     

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  8. SafetyFirst

    SafetyFirst Registered Member

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    I don't trust Window Washer much. It's just too fast in shredding files or "washing" free space (even "with bleach" i.e. overwriting with 35 passes) when compared with other erasing utilities.
     
  9. rookieman

    rookieman Registered Member

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    Thanks for your reply on this safetyfirst.Would you suggest something better than windowwasher.Perhaps you could pm me your suggestions if you prefer.I'm a little nervous on using Eraser on Vista that's all.o_O
     
  10. SafetyFirst

    SafetyFirst Registered Member

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    I really don't know how these programs behave on Vista. I am an XP user.
     
  11. Pleonasm

    Pleonasm Registered Member

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    Rookieman, your hesitation is justifiable, in my opinion. I wouldn’t use a powerful application like an erase utility on Windows Vista if it has not been thoroughly tested and certified. The downside risk is too large.

    SafetyFirst, it appears that when your uninstalled Opera, the application didn’t properly “clean up” after itself and delete its own “\Application Data” folder. The “.ico” files identified by Evidence Eliminator are icon files – i.e., images displayed next to bookmarks in a favorites list.
     
  12. rookieman

    rookieman Registered Member

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    Yes because Vista can be sensitive to this stuff.I'll keep checking around to find one that does.:D
     
  13. Pleonasm

    Pleonasm Registered Member

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    Different individuals have varying preferences, but personally I use Privacy Suite 5 by CyberScrub on Windows Vista Business (32-bit). It is Vista compatible, and includes Vista-specific features (e.g., erasing VSS “shadow copies”) that competitive products appear to lack.
     
  14. caspian

    caspian Registered Member

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    So if I install a program and run a Shadow Protect, it will completely remove this program and all traces of it?
     
  15. spy1

    spy1 Registered Member

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  16. Pleonasm

    Pleonasm Registered Member

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    ShadowProtect Desktop by StorageCraft will "remove this program {Evidence Eliminator}" only if you have an image of your PC that was created before it was installed.

    ShadowProtect Desktop is an example of an “image backup” utility that allows a user to backup/restore an entire partition (volume). If you create image backups of your operating system partition on a regular basis, then you can always revert to a prior state of your PC by restoring an image. Doing so will restore everything that was on the original source partition: applications, data, settings, the registry, etc.

    An image backup doesn’t provide any “privacy protection,” but it does deliver “system protection,” in the sense that you can easily revert to a known and good state of your PC. This is quite useful, if – for example – you try an operation (e.g., testing a new utility) that has unexpected and negative consequences.
     
  17. SafetyFirst

    SafetyFirst Registered Member

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    I don't know if I understood you correctly but none of those websites were on my bookmarks (favorites) list.
     
  18. SafetyFirst

    SafetyFirst Registered Member

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  19. n8chavez

    n8chavez Registered Member

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    I would be weary of snything Microsoft has influence over. Especially in this area. My advice, if you are going to use sdelete, skip version 1.51 and go with a non-MS version.
     
  20. Pleonasm

    Pleonasm Registered Member

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    SafetyFirst, can you kindly post a link to the test results to which you are referring?

    I have used SDelete on Windows XP with good success, both for wiping individual files as well as the free space on a hard disk drive. It isn’t fancy, but it does perform the basic function that is needed from an erase utility.
     
  21. rookieman

    rookieman Registered Member

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    Is any of you guys running EE with Vista?I'm not trying to hide anything like that.I'm the only guy that uses this comp and I was just use it to keep the garbage off it.I just appreciates a clean computer that's all.
     
  22. SafetyFirst

    SafetyFirst Registered Member

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    Sure.

    http://petworkshop.org/2006/preproc/preproc_08.pdf

    To spare you from excessive reading, I'll quote the article:

    (see Table 6).


    What is the version of SDelete you used successfully on your XP (I understand there were some problems with SDelete running on XP)?
     
  23. n8chavez

    n8chavez Registered Member

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    I would be a little cautious about this. The pdf mention sdelete 1.4, which is quite old. I'm just guessing here but I would assume the Eraser that was used for these tests would also be an outdated version.. I am not saying that the results of these tests are invalid because they are old, however they might not be acurate anymore. There might be better altermatives out there.
     
  24. spy1

    spy1 Registered Member

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    I'm quite familiar with SDelete - it's a perfectly fine program, developed long before M$ took it over. If you'll try reading the info, though, you'll see this:

    "The reason that SDelete does not securely delete file names when cleaning disk free space is that deleting them would require direct manipulation of directory structures. Directory structures can have free space containing deleted file names, but the free directory space is not available for allocation to other files. Hence, SDelete has no way of allocating this free space so that it can securely overwrite it."

    And your whole point in this thread was, I believe, concern about file names, was it not? Pete
     
  25. Pleonasm

    Pleonasm Registered Member

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    It was version 1.51. My understanding, based upon reading various posts in different forums, is that SDelete works well on XP (and possibly Vista) when erasing “normal” files – but, there may (?) be issues with compressed or encrypted files.

    The paper “One Big File Is Not Enough: A Critical Evaluation of the Dominant Free-Space Sanitization Technique” used SDelete 1.4, and found that it failed to erase a small number of disk sectors when wiping the free space on a hard disk drive (see Table 2). However, SDelete 1.51 might not be subject to the same criticism, since its algorithm appears solid:

    Source: SDelete
    * * * * * * * * * *​

    While SDelete does not erase the names of previously deleted files when wiping free space on a hard disk drive, it does destroy the names of existing files that it is wiping (by renaming the file 26 times, using “A” to “Z” substituted for each letter of the name).
     
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