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$9M in Bitcoins Buried In Garbage Dump

So he had a half hour tied up in generating a vast fortune out of thin air, forgot about it, and it's now been returned to the zero point universe from which it came.

Doesn't that allow others to get in on the scam?
 
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flexy said:
(I am pretty sure this has been posted already..nevertheless..)

http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/29/news/bitcoin-haul-landfill/index.html?iid=obnetwork

Some "IT guy" in the UK mined $9M worth of Bitcoin back in 2009. Allegedly forgot about it over the years....spilled coffee on his computer and then threw away the drive this last summer.
Click to expand...

You didn't even bother searching huh? All you had to do was type bitcoin and you'd see it.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2355996&highlight=bitcoin
 
When i heard this it was worth $4M.

I guess $9M must be at the $1200 peak, making it now $4M again.

Nice stable currency.
 
Malodrik said:
Moron has obviously never heard of DBAN
Click to expand...

Even before I heard of dban, when it comes to disposing of hard drives, I'd still make sure, in some shape or fashion, I would wipe the data in some fashion, or take a hammer to it.

"Well, it's gotta be very deep in that dump now... oh, and I wiped it.. well, fuck. hmm, I'm hungry, I could go for a sammich and brew."
 
Would a strong electromagnet do the job sufficiently? I've heard it can seriously fuck up the drive, but I doubt it would prevent anything from being restored.
 
Malodrik said:
Would a strong electromagnet do the job sufficiently? I've heard it can seriously fuck up the drive, but I doubt it would prevent anything from being restored.
Click to expand...

A strong enough magnet is technically supposed to work. If it's strong enough, it'll degauss the drive - i.e. rendering it useless, forever.
I'm sure some actual super magnets, straight cut, will do the trick - but generally, especially if following Government/DoD standards to be absolutely sure the drive is "sanitized", there are specific "degaussers" made for erasing magnetic hard disk drives.

Some release such a powerful magnetic burst that it physically destroys the actual motor in the HDD. If the motor is operational, the drive itself is still completely useless - it has to be magnetically formatted again at the factory. All in all, the data itself is absolutely gone. Even after factory restoration of the basic magnetic structure, it's a fresh slate - and also highly unlikely to happen anyhow.

Point: degaussing works, but, much like taking a hammer to the drive, it's pretty much permanent. Also, I don't KNOW if anything can be done, but I'm not sure if taking a drive out of a computer and destroying it with a hammer is enough to render the data "secure." To put it another way, I don't know if super smart data forensics can retrieve data off of pieces of magnetic platter. I've always heard even exposing the drives to air is generally enough to forever ruin all data, but I have a feeling that's only for sectors that had anything even graze the surface of a platter.
 
Colt45 said:
Why bother with electromagnets when you can just use encryption?
Click to expand...

encryption is never a permanent means of protecting data. It can, theoretically, be used in such a way, but even if I wasn't mindful of government data practices, I'd still be leery of betting that nobody ever will a) come across this drive, somewhere, anywhere, in the future, and b) not have any means of bypassing the encryption, or removing the encryption.

For humble, personal data... it shouldn't matter, true. But it's never a terrible idea to ensure that whatever data you had stored on a drive is forever and always, 100% inaccessible, even decades or more down the road. Maybe there's no data that's WORTH that level of effort to protect, but it can't hurt.

Not to mention, finding a drive that you determine is encrypted... would that not raise your curiosity enough to, say, hold onto it forever, in case you can find out how to get in? I would. 🙂
 
TwiceOver said:
Yeah I regularly just throw away hard drives without securing the data on them. 404 "IT Guy" not found.
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No kidding, you'd think he would have wiped the drive first at least. Either way, it's gone.

this reminds me I have a whole wack of dead drives I need to destroy some day. I want to use thermite. I'll have to make some. Need to find an efficient and clean way to grind up pop cans and rusty metal, which I would just let sit in salt water and do electrolysis overnight with 120v. Holy crap, now that I have a DSLR I should do a time lapse of that, it would probably look cool.
 
Red Squirrel said:
No kidding, you'd think he would have wiped the drive first at least. Either way, it's gone.

this reminds me I have a whole wack of dead drives I need to destroy some day. I want to use thermite. I'll have to make some. Need to find an efficient and clean way to grind up pop cans and rusty metal, which I would just let sit in salt water and do electrolysis overnight with 120v. Holy crap, now that I have a DSLR I should do a time lapse of that, it would probably look cool.
Click to expand...

Yes, you will, in fact, do exactly that.
Including recording with the DSLR.

You must! It is written!

:biggrin:
 
I have thrown away old computers/hard drives from time to time and I don't wipe the drive. If it's going in the trash anyway there's no need. In the real world we don't have technical bums going through people's trash looking for old data. What's most strange though is that even last summer there was some indication bitcoin would be worth something and yet he didn't remember he had the coins.
 
My solution for securing drives I want to dispose of: Death by hammer

I'm pretty sure it shatters the platter of a modern notebook drive in no time at all, and on a desktop drive I just try to score as much damage to the circuit board and heavily dent the casing as much as I can be bothered.
 
Doppel said:
I have thrown away old computers/hard drives from time to time and I don't wipe the drive. If it's going in the trash anyway there's no need. In the real world we don't have technical bums going through people's trash looking for old data. What's most strange though is that even last summer there was some indication bitcoin would be worth something and yet he didn't remember he had the coins.
Click to expand...

I usually only throw away dead drives, so they can't be wiped. I drive a center punch through them first. Paranoid? Maybe, but it only takes about ten seconds.

If they still work they get a single pass wipe, and are re-purposed.
 
Red Squirrel said:
No kidding, you'd think he would have wiped the drive first at least. Either way, it's gone.

this reminds me I have a whole wack of dead drives I need to destroy some day. I want to use thermite. I'll have to make some. Need to find an efficient and clean way to grind up pop cans and rusty metal, which I would just let sit in salt water and do electrolysis overnight with 120v. Holy crap, now that I have a DSLR I should do a time lapse of that, it would probably look cool.
Click to expand...
I've always been amazed by the effort people would go to. Simply have a bonfire and toss the dives in when you've got a good hot bed of coals. As the platters approach the curie temperature, you won't have to worry about the data.

Then again, I'm not sure what the curie temperature is for the thin layer... you'll probably melt the aluminum in the platter first.

Which brings up this idea, instead of grinding cans, why not grind up the platters?
 
DrPizza said:
I've always been amazed by the effort people would go to. Simply have a bonfire and toss the dives in when you've got a good hot bed of coals. As the platters approach the curie temperature, you won't have to worry about the data.

Then again, I'm not sure what the curie temperature is for the thin layer... you'll probably melt the aluminum in the platter first.

Which brings up this idea, instead of grinding cans, why not grind up the platters?
Click to expand...

But if you grind up the platters, what's really left for those material to ignite? 😛

Unless, the thought is more like this: "sacrifice one drive to be ground up - so that the rest may burn" 🙂
 
DrPizza said:
I've always been amazed by the effort people would go to. Simply have a bonfire and toss the dives in when you've got a good hot bed of coals. As the platters approach the curie temperature, you won't have to worry about the data.

Then again, I'm not sure what the curie temperature is for the thin layer... you'll probably melt the aluminum in the platter first.

Which brings up this idea, instead of grinding cans, why not grind up the platters?
Click to expand...

Yeah I thought of bond fire too, but termite is more fun.

And yeah I could sacrifice one platter for the death of the others. 😀
 
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