Some legal trouble with TOR in France

Sat May 13 22:13:53 UTC 2006

I will admit that I'm not quite sure what the fear is with this - 
reformatting it makes sense in case they installed evil software, but 
there's no reason to burn it or securely wipe it or whatever if you 
think that's all that's wrong with it.

I suppose they could technically have installed a hardware monitoring 
device, but I find it very *very* unlikely that they will have bothered. 
What's the chance that they'd have that kind of an expert on staff? I'd 
say, open it up, disconnect cables, see if they've added anything to the 
cables, reconnect it all, reformat the hard drive, and stop worrying 
about it.

I mean, okay, they *could* have installed a new hard drive controller 
chip with a built-in cellular antenna to broadcast your credit card 
details to the Illuminati. But they could also hire a ninja to break 
into your house at night, steal your cat's food, and hide your TV 
remote. (Or, for that matter, install a new controller chip.) At some 
point you just have to say "this is silly" and stop being paranoid.

-Ben

Ringo Kamens wrote:
> Well burning it doesn't do is completely (unless it's molten and then 
> mixed with other stuff). You should securely wipe it with a magnet and 
> then melt it. In this case, just wipe it about 100 times and then sell it.
> 
> On 5/13/06, *Alexandru ARMEAN* <alex at armean.net 
> <mailto:alex at armean.net>> wrote:
> 
>     There are methods (and they are used) to read data from a overwritten
>     disk.
> 
>     It has to do with the age of data that has been written in a single
>     place on the disk . The process, of what i remember , involves some more
>     hardware methods like taking of a very small layer of the disks surface
>     and then try to read data.
> 
> 
>     The only 100% solution of disposing your data is to burn the disc (and
>     then maybe melt it). But selling it maybe also be effective in the given
>     case...
> 
> 
> 
>     Alex
> 
> 
>     On Sat, 2006-05-13 at 23:55 +0200, Landorin wrote:
>      > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>      > Hash: SHA1
>      >
>      > I don't get it. Why buy a new one anyway? From what I know, any and
>      > every data will be lost if you format your hardisk with a safe method
>      > (can't remember the name right now but that method keeps writing
>      > random data to your entire hardisk to overwrite existing files and it
>      > does it for 10 times or more to ensure all old data is lost)?
>      >
>      > Sincerely,
>      > Landorin
>      >
>      >
>      > Eric H. Jung schrieb:
>      > > If you can't afford a new hard drive, be sure to wipe it using DBAN
>      > > http://dban.sourceforge.net/
>      > > (open-source, free)
>      > >
>      > >
>      > > --- Ringo Kamens <2600denver at gmail.com
>     <mailto:2600denver at gmail.com>> wrote:
>      > >
>      > >> Chances are it would be internal and couldn't hold much data. I
>      > >> really think
>      > >> you should sell your rig and buy a used one that's comprable
>     and cut
>      > >> the
>      > >> losses. It's too risky to keep it.
>      > >>
>      > >> On 5/13/06, Olivier Barbut < olivier.barbut at free.fr
>     <mailto:olivier.barbut at free.fr>> wrote:
>      > >>> thanks for the advice. I will for shure reformat everything and
>      > >>> reinstall linux when I get time for this. Changing hard drives
>      > >> would be
>      > >>> nice but I have not enough money for this right now.
>      > >>>
>      > >>> Do you know what a hard drive tap could look like ?
>      > >>>> As for the tor server, I suggest that you completely wipe those
>      > >> drives
>      > >>>> securely, reformat, and reinstall everything. The best thing to
>      > >> do
>      > >>>> would be to sell those drives and buy new ones because it could
>      > >> be
>      > >>>> that they put taps in them. Also, they could have installed a
>      > >>>> keylogger. If I were you, I wouldn't use any of that equipment
>      > >> again.
>      > >>>> At the very minimum, you need to reinstall
>     windows/linux/etc. and
>      > >> tor
>      > >>>> with a reformat because they probably put in a trojaned version
>      > >> of tor.
>      > >
>      > >
>      >
>      >
>      > - --
>      > Accelerate cancer research with your PC:
>      > http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/curecancer.html
>      >
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> 