[lug] Paranoia and deletion: the wipe man page

[Bear Giles]

Wouldn't that be a full-disk wipe?

Idle side thought - is there a daemon that periodically scans a disk and 
overwrites the unallocated sectors?  I would be far more concerned about 
them than the hardware keeping a secret copy of deleted files.

BTW years ago I read an article from somebody who managed to restore big 
chunks of a file by searching the raw device for key strings.  That 
would be a real pain with a 500 GB partition, vs. a 1 GB partition, but 
there's no reason it can't be done.

On 1/15/2011 11:18 AM, Stephen Kraus wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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:
>
>         * Subscribe to Recent Entries from Cory Doctorow
>           <http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fdynamic.boingboing.net%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmt%2Fmt-cp.cgi%3F__mode%3Dfeed%26_type%3Dposts%26blog_id%3D1%26id%3D1?source=email>
>           using *Google Reader*
>         * Get started using Google Reader
>           <http://www.google.com/reader/?source=email> to easily keep
>           up with *all your favorite sites*
>
>
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>
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