Domain 2: Asset Security; Data Destruction

Question 1

What is object reuse?

Answer 1

The act of recovering information from previously used objects, such as computer files. Objects may be physical or electronic.

Question 2

What is an example of a nontechnical object reuse attack?

Answer 2

Dumpster diving.

Question 3

What is an example of a technical object reuse attack?

Answer 3

Recovering information from unallocated blocks on a disk drive.

Question 4

Does deleting a file remove data from disk?

Answer 4

No, deleting a file removes the entry from the FAT and marks the data blocks as unallocated.

Question 5

Does formating a disk remove data from disk?

Answer 5

No, formating a disk destroys a FAT and replaces it with a new one.

Question 6

What is a more secure way of destroying data?

Answer 6

Overwriting writes over every character of a file or entire disk and is far more secure than deleting or formatting a disk drive. Electronic “shredding” or “wiping” overwrites file data.

Question 7

Is it necessary to perform multiple rounds of overwrites?

Answer 7

The usefulness is questionable. There are no known commercial tools (today) that can recover data overwritten with a single pass.