31 Jan
2003
31 Jan
'03
9:28 p.m.
Over two years, Simson Garfinkel and Abhi Shelat bought
158 used hard drives
at secondhand computer stores and on eBay. Of the 129 drives that
functioned, 69 still had recoverable files on them and 49 contained
"significant personal information" - medical correspondence, love letters,
pornography and 5,000 credit card numbers. One even had a year's worth of
transactions with account numbers from a cash machine in Illinois. "
First old PC I ever bought was from I think PCmall, they had just moved to
a new building and gave all their people new computers, and sold the old
one from a couple pallets in the outlet store. The sign said no hard drives
and no memory, but the guy at the counter said that "some" might still have
them. The one I bought had a couple years of client and vendor billing
data. I have SE/30 from a county psych center complete with all the ready
to print forms and a bunch of patient histories.
Many small scrappers promise whatever and then sell to whoever has the top
dollar. Or worse they are honest and won't sell to me. ;( Wow do I hate
walking into ta place and seeing tasty hard drives etc. getting drilled etc.
I don't see it as getting to be a real serious problem for us though, since
its pretty costly to scrap old computers "by the book". Much easier to tell
Joe in the warehouse to get rid of the old stuff, and he calls some
scrapper who slips him a few bucks and huals everything away on the spot.
1 Feb
1 Feb
7:05 a.m.
I bought a Sun Sparcstation 4/330 a few years ago. It's hdd was intact
and after breaking the password file (I used a program called 'John the
Ripper' on it), turns out it was an ex-Nasa machine used to model
rockets. Neato find, but dumb of Nasa to let it out without blanking
the drive or even making an attempt to blank it.
Turns out it's original home was the Marshal Space Flight Center. I
really thought that was NEAT.
Regards,
Jeff
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-admin(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-admin@classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Mike Ford
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003 5:43 AM
To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org; cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Expect to see fewer hard drives.
Over two years, Simson Garfinkel and Abhi Shelat bought
158 used hard
drives
at secondhand computer stores and on eBay. Of the 129
drives that
functioned, 69 still had recoverable files on them and 49 contained
"significant personal information" - medical correspondence, love
letters,
pornography and 5,000 credit card numbers. One even had
a year's worth
of
transactions with account numbers from a cash machine
in Illinois. "
First old PC I ever bought was from I think PCmall, they had just moved
to
a new building and gave all their people new computers, and sold the old
one from a couple pallets in the outlet store. The sign said no hard
drives
and no memory, but the guy at the counter said that "some" might still
have
them. The one I bought had a couple years of client and vendor billing
data. I have SE/30 from a county psych center complete with all the
ready
to print forms and a bunch of patient histories.
Many small scrappers promise whatever and then sell to whoever has the
top
dollar. Or worse they are honest and won't sell to me. ;( Wow do I hate
walking into ta place and seeing tasty hard drives etc. getting drilled
etc.
I don't see it as getting to be a real serious problem for us though,
since
its pretty costly to scrap old computers "by the book". Much easier to
tell
Joe in the warehouse to get rid of the old stuff, and he calls some
scrapper who slips him a few bucks and huals everything away on the
spot.
11:40 p.m.
On Sat, 1 Feb 2003, Jeffrey S. Worley wrote:
I bought a Sun Sparcstation 4/330 a few years ago.
It's hdd was intact
and after breaking the password file (I used a program called 'John the
Ripper' on it), turns out it was an ex-Nasa machine used to model
rockets. Neato find, but dumb of Nasa to let it out without blanking
the drive or even making an attempt to blank it.
Turns out it's original home was the Marshal Space Flight Center. I
really thought that was NEAT.
I guess its going to be interesting to see whats still on the number of
ex-NASA systems I bought from a 3rd party ages ago. They were all nearly
100% intact, including the drives, and I expect that they were not wiped
either. (And before anyone emails me privately, no, I won't be sharing
anything I might find.)
-Toth
2 Feb
2 Feb
1:44 a.m.
On Sun, 2 Feb 2003, Tothwolf wrote:
On Sat, 1 Feb 2003, Jeffrey S. Worley wrote:
> I bought a Sun Sparcstation 4/330 a few years ago. It's hdd was intact
> and after breaking the password file (I used a program called 'John the
snip
> Turns out it's original home was the Marshal
Space Flight Center. I
> really thought that was NEAT.
I bought some DSSI drives on Ebay a while back. Some of them had the
property tax oracle database of a midsize midwest US city in it, but the
interesting ones had Word Perfect for VMS files used by the city's police
department.
It had various police reports for hookers, stolen credit cards and cop-cop
grievances on it. Good thing DSSI drives have the built in firmware erase
function, too bad no one used it until I got the drive.
The seller might have done a VMS INIT/NOERASE on the drive. I looked at
the files with Ultrix and hence did not have the ability to read FILES 11.
--
7994
days inactive
7995
days old
3 comments
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participants (4)
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mikeford＠socal.rr.com -
Technoid＠30below.com -
thompson＠new.rr.com -
tothwolf＠concentric.net