Millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed • Hacker News Board

Re: Millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed

#111

Post by nielsole » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:20 PM UTC

more_corn wrote: post #105

thedougd wrote: post #7

Surprised it doesn't mention compliance frameworks as a culprit. NIST 800-88 calls for destruction if the data is highly sensitive and the drive is leaving the organization. Wrt risk management, it's not worth deviating from NIST. https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=91793...

I faced this same problem. My company policy required destruction of data before drives can leave the colo. I even had a hydraulic drive crusher in the cage to crush failed drives. However. The Linux utility shred can do a multi-pass random rewrite followed by zeros. (That last is critical for the next step) Then to verify, grab a random block and sum the data. If it’s not zero you crush the disk. Bake that script in…

I always understood reserve storage to be one of the main concerns. Your disk might have decommissioned some sectors / flash cells without wiping(or being able to) wipe it. The data you can pull if you bypass the drive controller e.g. by flashing custom firmware or desoldering flash chips is probably not zero.

Re: Millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed

#112

Post by Bedon292 » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #27

I find it strange how preachy a part of HN can get about less CO2 emissions and being eco-friendly but then unequivocally support en extremely eco-unfriendly initiative like physically destroying usable storage devices. If you have principles, this is your litmus test. Show everyone that your principles hold even when there's a risk for you (and that risk is only perceived IMO, and not real if you have good procedure…

You can have principles you desire to follow but still legally have to follow NIST 800-88. Can even add feedback to future iterations of the publication and attempt to get it changed in the future. Doesn't change the current requirement though.

And running a "shred" with multiple passes requires hardware and electricity to run, which needs to be maintained and scaled to such a level that the process could be done within a reasonable timeframe. Large drives these days could take multiple days each to run plus verification time. And now scale that to thousands of drives. That's a lot of additional hardware and electricity. Where recycling the shredded drive feels more eco friendly. But don't have any actual numbers to support that. Would definitely be interested in actual numbers and how things would play out big picture.

Re: Millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed

#113

Post by zokier » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

justapassenger wrote: post #104

zokier wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just buying up drives and waiting few years for when they can easily break the encryption. "Few years" ... "easily" ... yeah, nope. I'm pretty sure that even 15 year old luks/truecrypt/bitlocker setups are not "easy" to break today, and have very little reason to suspect that current day cryptosystems would be any more likely to get broken in "few years"

You do know that state sponsored actors are already archiving encrypted traffic that they were able to tap into, between nodes of interest for them, with the same purpose, of trying to decrypt it later? "Easily" means very different thing if you talk about script kiddies vs state sponsored actors.

State sponsored actors are not magic. Basic crypto primitives and systems that have been already available for long time have proven to be robust against even the most well-resourced attackers. Everything we've seen so far indicates that generally attacks happen by running malware, exploiting opsec failures, or some such leaks/implementation faults, and not attacking cryptosystems directly.

Furthermore this scenario relevant for this thread, decrypting discarded hard drives, has very limited opportunities for complex attacks such as evil maids, cold boots, or other such more active methods.

Notably Snowden said following, and while no doubt some progress has been made since I believe the basic idea be still valid:

> “Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.”

Re: Millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed

#114

Post by anotherhue » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

doublerabbit wrote: post #100

kryogen1c wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget that sensitive data is encrypted. The only thing harder than breaking bitlocker on a hard drive is breaking bitlocker on a random 0.5% chunk of hard drive unaligned with the r/w tracks. Bullshit is too weak a word.

> Bullshit is too weak a word. Try the English slang word for bullshit, bollocks. Or that if we wish to keep it PG: deceptive nonsense.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/bollocks

Re: Millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed

#115

Post by omniglottal » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:40 PM UTC

EMCymatics wrote: post #64

rwmj wrote: post #33

My friend once worked at a place where the security policy was that every part of the PC including monitors was crushed and shredded. This was a financial services company, but nevertheless totally over the top.

Monitors can be a security risk

So can a cat. Is the solution, then, to crush them all, treating an imperceptible risk as a certainty? Let's also treat all suspects as guilty until proven innocent to address even more risk! /s

Re: Millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed

#116

Post by Gordonjcp » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:20 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #13

Gordonjcp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but a single pass of /dev/zero will destroy all the data beyond hope of recovery.

Only if you're sure 1 -> 0 is not detectably different from 0 -> 0. There's almost certainly secure ways to delete. But not worth it for a five year old drive that may have had sensitive information on it.

How could they possibly be detectably different?

If you're saving stuff on old MFM drives today, you're probably not in the demographic that cares about wiping drives for disposal.

Re: Millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed

#117

Post by deepsun » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

more_corn wrote: post #105

thedougd wrote: post #7

Surprised it doesn't mention compliance frameworks as a culprit. NIST 800-88 calls for destruction if the data is highly sensitive and the drive is leaving the organization. Wrt risk management, it's not worth deviating from NIST. https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=91793...

I faced this same problem. My company policy required destruction of data before drives can leave the colo. I even had a hydraulic drive crusher in the cage to crush failed drives. However. The Linux utility shred can do a multi-pass random rewrite followed by zeros. (That last is critical for the next step) Then to verify, grab a random block and sum the data. If it’s not zero you crush the disk. Bake that script in…

Minor nitpick: Data recovery team are not magicians, can also be lazy. And hacking techniques keep improving, so I'd never re-sell a drive that previously had highly valuable data.

Re: Millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed

#118

Post by Gordonjcp » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:22 PM UTC

netrus wrote: post #10

Gordonjcp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but a single pass of /dev/zero will destroy all the data beyond hope of recovery.

But you can't see from the outside if the drive was wiped. How can I be sure that I do not mix up the to-be-wiped and the wiped drives with 99.999% accuracy? That I did not unplug the drive before the whipping was finished? It's much easier with physical destruction.

This is about the only valid objection in all the replies to my post.

You're bang on - you might not know it's been wiped.

99.9999% of people will never need to care about it that much.

Re: Millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed

#119

Post by fmajid » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:31 PM UTC

thedougd wrote: post #7

Surprised it doesn't mention compliance frameworks as a culprit. NIST 800-88 calls for destruction if the data is highly sensitive and the drive is leaving the organization. Wrt risk management, it's not worth deviating from NIST. https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=91793...

I've heard from someone with a security clearance the DoD doesn't have an established and approved protocol for destruction, so in the meantime the drives are simply warehoused.

Re: Millions of usable hard drives are being destroyed

#120

Post by paulmd » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

SkyPuncher wrote: post #96

From a risk management perspective, most storage devices have a "table stakes" requirement to "not lose data". Performance, storage duration, reliability, etc, etc, etc, etc, are all secondary to "do not lose data". You're dead in the water if you lose data. Everything beyond "don't lose data" can and is proprietary implementations of read/write; often with tricks being used to increase speed. While it's challenging…

> For example, I believe many SSDs will simply mark a block as "unused" rather than physically rewriting the data in that block. When the block gets used again, you simply set it to the new values.

Most SSDs (everything that follows the OPAL standard) actually encrypt all data all the time, and support a "secure erase" mode that destroys the encryption key from the TPM and renders the data inert. Copy the flash chips to your heart's content, if you believe the premise of encryption then it'll be a couple million years before you have any chance of cracking the key.

There's no reason this can't also be used on hard drives - or via a higher-level solution like Bitlocker. Again, if you believe in the idea of Bitlocker, then if you lose (or destroy) the key the data is unusable, that's the entire sales pitch of Bitlocker. Drive data is completely inaccessible if removed from their PC and the TPM it contains, and people don't like this because Windows 11 is turning this on by default now.

Physically crushing a drive is needless and wasteful unless you fundamentally disagree that cryptography exists and can work. And it also completely eliminates the possibility that your e-waste vendor is screwing you around behind your back. Fine, have a bunch of white-noise data if you like.

The problem is that businesses like to reduce a 1-in-a-trillion chance to zero, and they're punished if something does happen. And I'm sure hard drive companies like the extra sales and probably nudge them into it too. But it's overall a market failure and a needless e-waste stream, of the kind that the EU does like to eliminate.