OSEC

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FreeBSD Security Archives: Re: secure filesystem wiping

Re: secure filesystem wiping

Wes Peters (wessoftweyr.com)
Thu, 18 Nov 1999 23:57:36 -0700

Kris Kennaway wrote:
>
>
> I don't understand why you think that the person who wrote the Linux tool
> is privy to some kind of enlightened knowledge which us poor FreeBSD'ers
> (and the security researches who authored the aforementioned papers on
> secure deletion) aren't. If Wes Peters wrote some impressive drivel to
> attach to his 'obliterate' program about how kick-arse it is, would it
> make you happier?

In fact, wipe uses the same overwrite algorithm obliterate does.

The problem is trouBle seems to have assumed wipe has a really neat feature
that just isn't there: the ability to zot disk sectors that are not currently
allocated, on a live filesystem. This is a neat idea, but well past my knowlege
of filesystems at this time.

> AXIOM 1) take all claims made by the vendor about the abilities of
> their software with a very large handful of NaCl.
>
> Exercise for the novice reader: apply Axiom 1 to the Linux 'wipe' program.
>
> Exercise 2: apply axiom 1 to the secure deletion utility "FileSpanker"
> which can be found at http://www.freebsd.org/~kris/filespanker.sh

Snort. 

-- 
            "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"

Wes Peters                                                         Softweyr LLC
wessoftweyr.com                                           http://softweyr.com/

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Fri Nov 19 1999 - 00:57:15 CST