Re: [cobalt-security] Credit cards

["E.B. Dreger" <eddy+public+spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

GW> Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 05:29:23 -0400
GW> From: Gerald Waugh


GW> We process the card in RAM, then wipe the arrays. I have seen

Exactly. :-)


GW> processing software that writes the data to a file, then
GW> deletes the file. I stay away from that.

Yup.  Good job. :-)  A quick story for the benefit of others who
might think that deleting files is sufficient:

I once did something really stupid...

	dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0

when I meant

	dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0

on a BSD machine.  Bye bye slice table and first volume on the
wrong spindle.  I caught myself in time to save the other
partitions... if only I could remember where they were.

Solution?  A program that munched disk sector by sector, checking
for valid superblock candidates.  I took another program, made
some changes, and ran it... soon enough, I had my partition table
reconstructed.

Now let's say that somebody cracks root on a box with "deleted"
credit card numbers.  How hard is it to write a program that
scans a raw drive for "deleted" credit card numbers?


--
Eddy

Brotsman & Dreger, Inc. - EverQuick Internet Division
Phone: +1 (316) 794-8922 Wichita/(Inter)national
Phone: +1 (785) 865-5885 Lawrence

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