The Great Zero Challenge

[Mary Hawking]

In message <20080909021901.18551.33748.Mailman@chiark.greenend.org.uk>, 
ukcrypto-request@chiark.greenend.org.uk writes

>Why, whenever hard drive deletion is mentioned, do sensible people 
>forget anything they know about attack models and cost-benefit?
>
>You cannot prove that data on a disc that has been over written is 
>unrecoverable, but that won't matter for most users.  Anyone who thinks 
>CESG is going to attack their hard drive will have enough money to 
>over-write, degaus and then grind all hard drives.  Anyone else will be 
>satisfied with a single overwrite of all zeros,  especially if that's 
>done using ATA commands.

I wasn't really thinking about CESG.
Does anyone know how good Nigerian (and other) scammers are at reading 
discs supposedly erased?
Mary Hawking
PS as I said, this is personal data - and as the problem is to safely 
erase data before dumping the computers, I don't really care whether the 
disc could be re-used.


-- 
Mary Hawking