[photo by Flickr user gillyberlin]
Finally, it looks like someone has managed to pick the perfect hardware upgrade for all the embattled hedge-fund managers out there. Researchers have found that garbage collection methods on SSDs can often make data completely unrecoverable using available forensics techniques. According to an article published by Macworld, garbage collection purged all but a small percentage of 316,666 test files placed on the hard drive by researchers only three minutes after they were deleted. In a standard spinning drive, all of these files were recoverable.
Even after connecting a write blocker, a device designed to stop a hard drive from purging or writing over files, almost 20 percent of the contents of the drive were unrecoverable. According to the article, this is the first time write blockers have been ineffective in preserving the disk for future analysis.
Forensics experts are worried about the potential impact this has for investigating crimes, especially when the growing capacity of USB sticks and other solid-state media may one day lead to similar garbage collection being implemented there. Add that to the fact that it’s difficult or impossible to tell if this data wiping is done intentionally as a way to cover up evidence or if the average user just wanted more space for their Blu-Ray rip of Inception, and you’ve got a bunch of very nervous security professionals.
[via Macworld]
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