Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Wed, 5 May 1999 08:48:07 -0500
From:      Alan McLean <amcl@flash.net>
To:        Warner Losh <imp@harmony.village.org>
Cc:        Unknown User <kernel@tdnet.com.br>, security@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Security advisories
Message-ID:  <19990505084807.A1046@flash.net>
In-Reply-To: <199905050656.AAA08261@harmony.village.org>; from Warner Losh on Wed, May 05, 1999 at 12:56:23AM -0600
References:  <372F7B24.E352AEFF@tdnet.com.br> <372E4911.3A384379@tdnet.com.br> <199905042049.OAA04590@harmony.village.org> <372F7B24.E352AEFF@tdnet.com.br> <199905050656.AAA08261@harmony.village.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wed, May 05, 1999 at 12:56:23AM -0600, Warner Losh wrote:
> In message <372F7B24.E352AEFF@tdnet.com.br> Unknow User writes:
> > When a user deletes a file, the OS only removes its inode, is there any
> > utils that writes 1/0 to the Hard Disk blocks ?
> 
> Not that I'm aware of.  The OS will never give those "dirty" blocks to
> a user w/o first zeroing them.  They are still available on the raw
> device should you have good reason to expunge them from the disk.
> 
> > And about memory, is there any utils that fill in memory with 1/0 ?
> 
> No.  Again, the OS doesn't give out dirty memory pages, so this
> generally isn't a problem.  The only time it might be a problem is if
> a user breaks root and starts snooping in memory.  However, if that
> happens, the active memory can be targeted and you likely have bigger
> problems to worry about.

Here's an interesting paper and implementation about that

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/secure_del.html
http://gsu.linux.org.tr/wipe/

-amcl


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19990505084807.A1046>