A different kind of security issue...

From: Manny Quest (manwithquestion@hotmail.com)
Date: 08/20/01 

From: "Manny Quest" <manwithquestion@hotmail.com>
To: SECURITY-BASICS@securityfocus.com
Subject: A different kind of security issue...
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 20:25:54 +0000
Message-ID: <F221OS6BC4zKqE901G50000cfea@hotmail.com>

Here's a good one. I obtained a laptop from one of our department heads and
was asked to wipe off the hard drive and set it up for a person in another
department. The laptop had Win2k preinstalled using NTFS.

I did a full format on the drive, again choosing NTFS. I reinstalled Win2k,
not choosing any repair or recovery options to save existing data. Upon
browsing drive C, I was surprised to find that some of the directories that
existed for the previous user were still there, even after the full format.
The files within these directories were also intact. I shudder to think what
would have happed if I hadn't stumbled accross this.

I am familiar with data recovery and source wiping techniques. Yet, usually
I was comfortable with simply formatting a drive so that the average Joe
couldn't see what used to be there. Perhaps I still have things to learn.

Has anyone ever seen/heard of an NTFS file system doing this? Thanks in
advance.

Manny

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