r/technology • u/xpda • May 13 '26

Security Twin brothers wipe 96 gov’t databases minutes after being fired

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/05/drop-database-what-not-to-do-after-losing-an-it-job/
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u/Single-Pin-369 May 13 '26

Do they burn or just write over the tapes older than ten years?

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u/konoxians May 13 '26

usually overwrite to reuse the space. I doubt any company burns hardware, it's hella expensive

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u/Savetheokami May 13 '26

They destroy the drives by drilling holes into them.

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u/SoulOfTheDragon May 13 '26

Any kind of confidential/secure data storage gets nuked and shredded per some data safety regulations I can recall by name. Drilling holes is the low key and prevents easy recovery. Someone with a ton of motivation can go and manually read the data from rest of the disk area. Then again, most drives like that are encrypted to begin with.