[lug] Paranoia and deletion: the wipe man page

Sat Jan 15 11:53:34 MST 2011

There is a way to DoD wipe a single file (it just fills the normally
occupied space with various patterns of 000s, then 111s, then alternating 0s
and 1s) but I can't seem to recall which utility I could use

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Bear Giles <bgiles at coyotesong.com> wrote:

>  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>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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