[ale] Data not safe on ssds

[David Tomaschik]

On 03/02/2011 07:23 AM, Geoffrey Myers wrote:
> Stephen R. Blevins wrote:
>> Greg,
>>      Is this the kind of paper you had in mind?  I got it from a SANS 
>> NewsBite article.
>>
>> http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/users/swanson/papers/Fast2011SecErase.pdf
> 
> There was an interesting article on slashdot about this subject that was 
> contrary to the previous article I posted.  So, which way is it?
> 
> http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/03/01/1740240/SSDs-Cause-Crisis-For-Digital-Forensics
> 
> At the end of the summary paragraph on /., the writer says:
> 
> So either SSDs are really hard to erase, or really hard to recover. I'm 
> so confused.
> 

The article where data recovery was possible examined the
deletion/overwriting of a single file and the investigators looked at
the individual flash chips to recover data (ignoring the flash
translation layer).

The more recent article involves actions taken by the FTL when the
entire drive is formatted.

Moral of the story is: if you have something to hide, format the whole
drive; if you're looking for something, avoid the FTL/controller chips.

-- 
David Tomaschik, RHCE, LPIC-1
System Administrator/Open Source Advocate
OpenPGP: 0x5DEA789B
http://systemoverlord.com
david at systemoverlord.com