Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN), a popular free, open source secure disk wipe tool
Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN), a popular free, open source secure disk wipe tool, has passed stringent tests from the US Department of Justice. While the DOJ and its partner agencies point out that this is not an official endorsement of the tool (or any others that pass the tests), it does provide a high degree of confidence in the product's security. The test report confirms DBAN works as advertised for IDE, SATA and SCSI disks, with the exception of manufacturer's hidden disk areas (so-called Host Protected Areas and Device Configuration Overlays). While this may be an issue where there is a chance of malicious users hiding data (which is possible with special tools, but by no means trivial), it is not possible to accidentally store data in these hidden areas so for most users DBAN is an effective and free solution. DBAN compares very favorably with the commercial tools subject to the same testing regime. The DOJ tests were carried out as part of a wider set of tests for computer forensics tools, and the full testing methodology is available for the public. Unfortunately in the UK although a list of Government approved disk erasers is available from CESG, the details of the testing methodology are not published for public consumption. This recent test further confirms the value of open source products in the computer security market.
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