[email protected] (Ed Gould) writes: > Now this goes back aways and my memory is not 100 percent but... > > There are probably some of you here that remember when the White House > (in the 70's-80's) lost a lot of email from around the time of > Watergate. > > I had a friend who was an IBMer working at the White House in that > time frame. He was involved in trying to get back all the lost > emails. My memory is iffy here but when I was talking with my friend > he was telling me how exhaustive IBM worked at getting back the > emails. They had quite a few factory types working on getting them > back. They were not particularly successful because of data getting > written over and recovery was at best spotty. > > I am pretty sure they ran some type of PROFs (it was VM based that is > all I remember) and he got somewhat familiar with reading track dumps > and also whiz bang (he never gave me specifics) way of reading what > was underneath what was current on the track. > > He is long time retired and is enjoying a well deserved retirement so > I hope he doesn't get in any trouble for anything I am writing here.
re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#8 Happy DEC-10 Day http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#44 sysout using machine control instead of ANSI control http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#87 "The Naked Mainframe" (Forbes Security Article) folklore is that one would need one large pile of clearances to touch such stuff (sufficient to cover anything that might be on the media). tape management (including backup tapes) doesn't always get the consideration it deserves ... recent posts about almaden datacenter going thru a period where it appeared scratch tape requests involved selecting tapes at random to mount: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2010b.html#51 Source code for s/360 there have been past stories about some companies nearly being taken down ... when it was discovered that backup process wasn't actually writing anything on the tapes. there are some federal standards for overwritting as countermeasure to such recovery some discussion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_recovery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_erasure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Shredder one of the Rainbow books: A Guide to Understanding Data Remanence in Automated Information Systems http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/rainbow/tg025-2.htm from above: 5.2.1 MAGNETIC TAPES Although overwriting can be used for clearing this media, the method is time consuming and generally never used. Also, inter-record gaps may preclude proper clearing. A better method for clearing Type I, II, and III tapes is degaussing with a Type I or Type II degausser. This procedure is considered acceptable for clearing, but not purging, all types of tapes. Degaussing with an appropriate degausser is the only method the DoD accepts for purging this media. Specifically, a Type I degausser can purge only Type I tapes, and Type II degaussers can purge Types I and II tapes. No degausser presently exists that is capable of purging Type III tapes in accordance with NSA/CSS Specification L14-4-A. ... snip ... -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
