Garbology

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For uses of this term in reference to espionage or identity theft, see Dumpster diving

Garbology is the study of refuse and trash. It is an academic discipline and has a major outpost at the University of Arizona long directed by William Rathje. The project started in 1971, originating from an idea of two students for a class project. It is a major source of information on the nature and changing patterns in modern refuse. Industries wishing to demonstrate that discards originating with their products are (or are not) important in the trash stream are avid followers of this research, as are municipalities wishing to learn whether some parts of the trash they collect has any salable value.

The studies of garbology and archaeology often overlap, because fossilized or otherwise time-modified trash is quite often the only remnant of ancient populations that can be found. For those who left no buildings, no writing, no tombs, no trade goods, and no pottery, refuse and trash are likely to be the only possible sources of information. In addition, ancient garbage sometimes contains information available in no other way, such as food remains, pollen traces of then local plants, and broken tools.

In addition, Rathje's research uncovered some misconceptions about landfills. In particular, it was revealed that the rate of natural biodegradation is far slower than had been assumed (e.g., in capacity planning).

Another use of garbology is as a recognized act of corporate espionage. This not only includes physical sorting of papers from a rubbish bin but also analysis of files found in a computer's recycle bin. Many users of modern computers tend to be careless with their passwords, so they are written down on pieces of paper and often stored somewhere near the user's workstation. Passwords recovered from such caches give an attacker has full access to the user's files, and may lead to other passwords, including access control to other accounts or cryptosystem passwords. Analysis of a user's discarded files (on disk or on paper) can contain information about passwords and about the user. Increased knowledge about a user increases an attacker's chances of guessing passwords (e.g., those based on pets, sports teams, relationships, etc).

Another type of garbology is the analysis of temp files. Temp files are created on a computer's hard drive by many applications, and in some cases by the operating system, and are usually used as a form of safety backup. Sometimes, temp files are not deleted. Some encryption software does not effectively destroy plaintext files after encryption, leaving them as temp files.

Garbology, in the sense above, is an often successful way of discovering user passwords and personal details; it can be sometimes be used even when the physical computer (and hard drives) are not physically available. In cases in which an attacker has only remote or partial physical access to a computer, the degree of difficuty is increased to an large amount.

The term 'garbology' is also used as an amusing term for the 'science' of waste management, with refuse workers called 'garbologists'.