[rescue] Sparc IPX's

[Nathaniel Grady]

On Sat, Mar 30, 2002 at 05:34:35PM -0500, dave at cca.org wrote:
> Is removing RAM a recent policy? I've gotten lots of ex-mil stuff
> with drives removed, but never RAM. But I'm also aware that the
> report that explained that data *can* be extracted from RAM is
> only a few years old.

I interned at a gvn't place (Navy research base in southern Maryland)
and got to surplus a few boxes (they were heavy so nobody else wanted to
do it :) and the policy was that "no data could remain on the
computers," which meant either secure-erase the drive (1's then 0's then
1's ad infinitum) or remove them. Only ram that was removed was ram that
fit another computer that we actually used :) That said all the
computers that got surplused hadn't been in use for a few years so i
doubt you could retrieve anyting from the ram anymore. Other agencies
may be more paranoid (like the NSA or somethin?). Missing ram for
"security reasons" sounds to me like either some PHB needed someting to
say about what their group had done to increase security or someone
needed the ram for someting else...

 just my 2c,
 --Nate Grady