[BBC] Phones held by police remotely wiped

[Discover]

Phones held by police remotely wiped

Several police forces have had potential evidence wiped from mobile phones while in police custody, the BBC has learned.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-294...hannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

[WuddaWaste]

[mirandam]

What I most like about the story is the last paragraph where they comment on a self-destructing harddisk...
Made me remember good old days of the Mission Impossible tv-series where the tape was destroyed in 5 seconds after its message was played.... fiction made into reality!

[Ninja^F.U.B.A.R.]

Not to rain on the parade, but surely any half-rate hacker, let alone a pro data recovery specialist, would be able to read the data. The wipe is just a simple quick format.

[aus9]

To secret squirrels and rabbits

use anacron to catch a cronjob script that will start on the hour.

do not boot your own PC a few minutes before the hour so you have time to get to terminal to disable the script sitting in /etc/crontab

script is run in RAM and is a simple dd command with randomness and wipes 50 or more times.

Naturally you are not forced to have the cron job start on the hour. It could be any time.

Secondly the police could spot and disable it before the cron time ticks over.

It won't be instant but IMHO it will be effective.

[mirandam]

So... I can't use tipex on my phone? ....gosh....