Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 22:49:05 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: trouble@netquick.net Cc: Barrett Richardson <barrett@phoenix.aye.net>, David G Andersen <danderse@cs.utah.edu>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: secure filesystem wiping Message-ID: <3834E4D1.F1B3EC6B@softweyr.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.01.9911172336080.5008-100000@phoenix.aye.net> <38347544.3D50A536@softweyr.com> <3834785B.D1A99603@netquick.net>
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TrouBle wrote:
>
> will you all take a look at this, this is what i am looking for!!
>
> Wipe is a tool that effectively degauses the surface of a hard
> disk, making it virtually impossible to retrieve the data that was
> stored on it. This is the ultimate in making sure secure data that is
> erased from a hard drive is unrecoverable.
OK, I just looked at it. I don't see where it differs greatly from
obliterate. In particular, nothing about the manpage or the code
suggests that it will do what you suggest, background wiping of free
sectors on a mounted filesystem. On the contrary, it appears that is
has some special code introduced for handling block devices that seem
to be unnecessary, given that block devices are (soon to be) no longer
found in FreeBSD.
I agree that the ability to securely overwrite disk sectors before
returning them to the free pool is an excellent idea, but this tool does
not appear to provide such a feature.
When the original discussion that lead to my rather simple obliterate
program occurred, Matt Dillon and others pointed out the way to really
do this would be to integrate the disk sector wiping into the VM system.
While I agree this sounds like an excellent feature, I am not going to
be able to do that anytime in the foreseeable future. If someone else
wants to work on this, feel free to use any part of the code I've written,
it's under a Berkeley-style "copycenter" license after all. ;^)
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/
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