From: Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Date: Sun Mar 16 1997 - 11:23:29 MST
One of the maxims espoused by Eric Hughes on the cypherpunks list was
this: "all cryptography is economics." This means that the purpose of
crypto is not to provide absolute security; nothing can do that. Rather,
the sole purpose is to raise the cost to the opponent of getting the
protected information.
In this context, disk wipe software does indeed raise that cost, since
it prevents the commonly-available undelete programs from working. it
is far more expensive to pull the disk platter out of its casing and
start examining it with a microscope than to run undelete. It depends
on the value of your information whether the wipe programs are enough
for you or not.
Hal
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