Securely wiping any device makes it just fine to sell [#FUDfighters]

10 CommentsPosted by Mtn_ScottMarch 30, 2012 - 18:2920 hours ago

PANIC!!!!!!!!

I Thought my Angry Birds Stars were secured!!!!

Select ratingSpamThumbs DownThumbs Up  Login or register to post comments Posted by icebikeMarch 30, 2012 - 18:3619 hours ago

Never sell your MicroSD card with the phone. Let the new user buy their own.

Of the apps linked to above only ShredDroid claims to overwrite system storage, and reviews seem mixed as to whether it does that at all. The rest only address the MicroSD.

For internal storage, simply wipe the phone then side load it FULL of innocuous photos, then wipe it again.

That will overwrite every user writable portion, and any recovery only gets landscapes of your vacation. And, NO, there is no need to overwrite storage many times like some of these apps seem to think. That hasn't been necessary since the demise of magnetic tape.

Your settings might still be erased (but not gone) from system storage.

Like Jerry says, the people who can get at that data are few and far between. But where are your email passwords stored? Might not hurt to change those when selling the phone.

Phones replaced by carriers are at special risk here, because sometimes its non-functional when turned in, and you can't wipe it. More than one of these has been shipped with data intact as a refurb.

Select ratingSpamThumbs DownThumbs Up  Login or register to post comments Posted by OmarF82March 30, 2012 - 18:3819 hours ago

Whaattt my Angrybirds stars aren't secure either? OMFG

Select ratingSpamThumbs DownThumbs Up  Login or register to post comments Posted by bacidathMarch 30, 2012 - 19:1019 hours ago

photorec is a great tool for recovering "deleted" photos as well as other things... used it to pull long lost photos off a thumbdrive that had been formatted and rewritten to over many years...
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

Select ratingSpamThumbs DownThumbs Up  Login or register to post comments Posted by TechWMarch 30, 2012 - 20:1318 hours ago

Erasing a Flash drive or SSD is not the same as erasing magnetic media such as a standard hard drive. Using a standard wipe utility may not, in fact, eliminate all your data due to the differences in how the flash drives maintain the data.

Recommending any wipe utility without doing thorough testing on them seems a bit irresponsible. Encryption and physical destruction is probably the best answer for the moment.

Select ratingSpamThumbs DownThumbs Up  Login or register to post comments Posted by mikemosh511March 31, 2012 - 02:0612 hours ago

I'll remember to physically destroy my phone to erase the data before I sell it to someone.

Select ratingSpamThumbs DownThumbs Up  Login or register to post comments Posted by squiddy20March 30, 2012 - 21:1317 hours ago

Or you could just use any number of Windows/Ubuntu/Mac programs that wipe hard drives, SD cards, thumb drives, or whatever else you need. Mac's own Disk Utility has this capability. For Windows I've found this: http://www.partitionwizard.com/ to be a PERFECT tool for reformatting/wiping memory cards. It even has options for erasing/rewriting that are supposedly comparable to military standards. I've used it to repartition my SD card for true apps to SD capability because my Samsung Moment only has 200 some-odd MB of internal storage.
As for erasing data on system folders, a complete wipe via recovery (custom or stock) should do the trick.

Select ratingSpamThumbs DownThumbs Up  Login or register to post comments Posted by AdamOutlerMarch 31, 2012 - 00:1314 hours ago

The author is not a linux user? They system partition works like any other linux filesystem. Linux is better at data recovery than any other OS. Remount the system and you can recover any data.

Select ratingSpamThumbs DownThumbs Up  Login or register to post comments Posted by cowbuttMarch 31, 2012 - 02:1712 hours ago

The /system partition is normally mounted read-only, so there should never be any user data there, unless they've rooted and put it there manually.

/data and /cache, on the other hand, may (indeed, probably) hold user data, but those are wiped when doing a factory reset (either from within Android or recovery). I'm not sure whether those options just erase the superblock and rewrite it, or whether they actually fill those partitions with junk data first.

Any recovery tool that an attacker will have to use to attempt to recover data from those partitions will need to run natively on Android, though, or they're going to have to desolder the flash, which should mitigate things somewhat.

Select ratingSpamThumbs DownThumbs Up  Login or register to post comments Posted by SynycalwonMarch 31, 2012 - 08:385 hours ago

"The same thing applies for your Windows computer. If you're using FAT (the default prior to Windows 7 and still in use by some OEMs)"

Windows XP would be more accurate, at least as a business AND consumer (home) operating system. Prior to that it would be Windows 2000, or going back further Windows NT, which were both business oriented operating systems that use NTFS as the default file system, not FAT. You have to go way back to the DOS based Windows ME/98/95 to find FAT/FAT32 as the default file system. :)

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