gbde blackening feature - how can on disk keys be "destroyed" thoroughly?

[Vijay Kaul]

On Fri, 03 Sep 2004 19:41:18 -0400, Len Zettel <zettel at acm.org> wrote:

<snip>

> While i am not an expert in this area, I can not help but wonder---
> Who are you worried about recovering the data, under what
> circumstances?  My best guess is that recovering anything from
> even _one_ data over-write is going to require that the recoverer have
> physical posession of the drive and very sophisticated equipment
> indeed.  That means they have to be some branch of a govermnment.
> If you are going to attract attention of that caliber there are likely a  
> lot
> of other easier means of finding out what you are up to.  Otherwise, a
> good hot fire ought to be pretty final even for the CIA.
>    -LenZ-

I used to work in a lab and a co-worker had be a submarier for the US. He  
said that one of their projects was to figure out how to best destroy CDs  
for the government. Supposedly the CDs were recoverable even after  
cross-shredding. They either decided that melting them over a "heatsink"  
(coffee mug) in a microwave (also makes a nice ash tray) or going at them  
with an acetaline torch was the final solution.