[lug] Paranoia and deletion: the wipe man page

[Stephen Kraus]

There is a linux utility that does DoD level wipes as well, wipe works just
fine but if you are really paranoid I can point you towards that

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 7:15 AM, davide <davide.del.vento at gmail.com> wrote:

> Since there was a discussion on this topic onlist not long ago, I thought
> you'd find this interesting.
>
>
>
> Sent to you by davide via Google Reader:
>
>
> Paranoia and deletion: the wipe man page<http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/14/paranoia-and-deletio.html>
> via Recent Entries from Cory Doctorow<http://dynamic.boingboing.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&id=1&blog_id=1>by Cory Doctorow on 1/14/11
>
>
> Today I decided I wanted to really securely delete some files off my
> hard-drive; a quick search revealed that the GNU/Linux wipe command was
> just the thing. Before running it, I had a quick look at its *man* page
> and discovered something much more interesting than mere dry documentation:
> rather, the wipe manual is a paranoid masterpiece on the possible snitchware
> lurking inside your hard-drive and the special problems of being *really*sure you've deleted your data:
>
> I hereby speculate that harddisks can use the spare remapping area to
> secretly make copies of your data. Rising totalitarianism makes this almost
> a certitude. It is quite straightforward to implement some simple filtering
> schemes that would copy potentially interesting data. Better, a harddisk can
> probably detect that a given file is being wiped, and silently make a copy
> of it, while wiping the original as instructed.
>
> Recovering such data is probably easily done with secret IDE/SCSI commands.
> My guess is that there are agreements between harddisk manufacturers and
> government agencies. Well-funded mafia hackers should then be able to find
> those secret commands too.
>
> Don't trust your harddisk. Encrypt all your data.
>
> Of course this shifts the trust to the computing system, the CPU, and so
> on. I guess there are also "traps" in the CPU and, in fact, in every
> sufficiently advanced mass-marketed chip. Wealthy nations can find those.
> Therefore these are mainly used for criminal investigation and "control of
> public dissent".
>
> People should better think of their computing devices as facilities lended
> by the DHS.
>
> wipe(1) <http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man1/wipe.1.html>
>
> (*Image: Hard Drive 016<http://www.flickr.com/photos/jon_a_ross/1482849745/>,
> a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0)<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en>image from jon_a_ross's photostream
> *)
> * *
>
>    - Discarded photocopier hard drives stuffed full of corporate ...<http://boingboing.net/2010/03/26/discarded-photocopie.html#previouspost>
>    - Device remotely destroys hard drive data - Boing Boing<http://boingboing.net/2008/03/28/device-remotely-dest.html#previouspost>
>    - Hand-cranked Fujitsu ME-P3M hard drive degausser - Boing Boing<http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/07/21/handcranked-fujitsu.html#previouspost>
>    - Hard drive crushers... er.... crush drives hard - Boing Boing<http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/05/01/hard-drive-crushers.html#previouspost>
>    - Table made from ancient, giant hard-drive platter - Boing Boing<http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/14/table-made-from-anci.html#previouspost>
>
>
>
>
> Things you can do from here:
>
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