Re: Defragmentation.
From: John Elsbury (johne@snospam.sovereign.co.nz)
Date: 01/13/03
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From: johne@snospam.sovereign.co.nz (John Elsbury) Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 04:09:12 GMT
On 12 Jan 2003 17:54:33 -0800, davidmarsh99@mail.com (David Marsh)
wrote:
>Does defraging the hard drive actually do anything good for security?
>E.g. with reference to slack space / cluster tips, etc?
>
>Just curious. Thanks. David.
It depends on who you consider your adversary to be. As you know, DOS
/ Windows deletes do not clear the disk space which the deleted file
used to occupy, and information can be recovered fairly easily by
looking at the disk at the sector level. Defragmentation will tend
to overwrite "deleted-but-still-there" extents, depending of course on
how much data it needs to move around and where the old files used to
be.
Defragmentation would do nothing to defeat a well-resourced attacker
with physical access to the hard disk, as such an attacker has access
to tools which may recover bits which have been physically
over-recorded. Unless you are handling classified information (or
doing something extremely illegal) it is unlikely that an attack at
this level would be worthwhile or likely.
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