Re: Amazon storage/deletion question

[Matthias-Christian Ott <ott@mirix.org>]

On Tue, Feb 08, 2011 at 08:56:24AM -0700, Scott Wiersdorf wrote:
> I deleted my old tarsnap archives that I created prior to tarsnap
> v1.0.28; my question is whether Amazon storage deletes those files
> from its backups. Cloud storage systems vary widely in how they keep
> data--does anyone know if my old archives are truly gone?

You can never be sure that your data was deleted. Even if Amazon
would claim to delete your data, you could never be sure that it was
actually deleted.

So if you are asking this because of the recent tarsnap vulnerability,
I would assume that my data has been compromised, because a
“realistic” attack on the encryption has been outlined. One could
argue that nuking the data and making sure that no backups exist could
potentially prevent an attack after the deletion, but as I said you
can never be sure.

Moreover, I believe an entity which can force an internet service
provider to give away their costumer's data and can break the
encryption afterwards, would have other measures to get your data
even if Amazon deleted it.

So I wouldn't really worry about this matter that much.

> Scott

Regards,
Matthias-Christian