[Cryptography] Ex-CIA Joshua Schulte Describes His Data/Crypto Hiding Prowess

[Stephan Neuhaus]

On 3/4/20 1:53 AM, Grant Schultz wrote:
> On 2/29/20 3:27 AM, Grant Schultz wrote:
>>> (And even then, overwritten data can be recovered.)
>> Can I ask you what your evidence for that claim is?
> 
> Yes, the place you want to start is this: 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence

I went there and found quotes like

"Daniel Feenberg, an economist at the private National Bureau of 
Economic Research, claims that the chances of overwritten data being 
recovered from a modern hard drive amount to "urban legend".[3] He also 
points to the "​18 1⁄2-minute gap" Rose Mary Woods created on a tape of 
Richard Nixon discussing the Watergate break-in. Erased information in 
the gap has not been recovered, and Feenberg claims doing so would be an 
easy task compared to recovery of a modern high density digital signal."

and

"On the other hand, according to the 2014 NIST Special Publication 
800-88 Rev. 1 (p. 7): "For storage devices containing magnetic media, a 
single overwrite pass with a fixed pattern such as binary zeros 
typically hinders recovery of data even if state of the art laboratory 
techniques are applied to attempt to retrieve the data."[5] An analysis 
by Wright et al. of recovery techniques, including magnetic force 
microscopy, also concludes that a single wipe is all that is required 
for modern drives. They point out that the long time required for 
multiple wipes "has created a situation where many organisations ignore 
the issue all together – resulting in data leaks and loss."

So I'm still not seeing how "overwritten data" (presumably on a modern, 
high-density drive) "can be recovered".

Cheers

Stephan