Windows File Deletion: Going, Going, Still There
Written by Evan SchumanDecember 9th, 2009
Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but it's becoming much more difficult to achieve in Windows 7 and Windows Vista thanks to volume shadow copy. And that refusal to go away is becoming a real problem for IT security. Deleting a file—even using top security procedures—doesn't make it go away; another copy is squirreled away somewhere, in a manner that makes it almost impossible to delete.
All told, one sensitive document created on a company desktop machine may, in a matter of minutes, be unintentionally copied in 10 locations: an employee’s desktop; the LAN server that backs it up; a PDA; the carrier/vendor server that synchs the PDA data; a memory stick; the home computer the employee used that memory stick in; the personal external backup drive connected to that employee’s computer; an offsite backup service the employee uses; the shadow copy on that employee's work desktop machine; and the shadow copy on that employee's home desktop machine. And it can get a lot worse.
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2 Comments | Read Windows File Deletion: Going, Going, Still There
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December 14th, 2009 at 2:26 am
This problem has been around for a long time, perhaps 20 years or more, and is present in earlier versiond of Windows, too, including Windows XP. Sadly, the clueless folks at the PCI Security Council don’t understand how modern file systems work, and they have been stupidly requiring software developers to “securely delete” sensitive data. The thing is, that’s not really possible, and the old technique of overwriting confidential data multiple times simply generates a few more allocated disk sectors, while leaving the original “confidential” data untouched.
December 14th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Ah, but perhaps one day (one can always hope, can’t one?) PCI might catch up with the late 20th century and then think about moving into reality. Meantime, this only serves to heap on more evidence of how “useful” PCI really is…