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Date:      Thu, 20 May 1999 22:47:16 +0200
From:      Tim Priebe <tim@iafrica.com.na>
To:        Joel Maslak <jmaslak@wind-river.com>
Cc:        security@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Secure Deletion
Message-ID:  <374474D4.2263@iafrica.com.na>
References:  <3.0.6.32.19990520095507.00840010@india.wind-river.com>

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Joel Maslak wrote:
> 
> Let's keep standard BSD semantics here, please!
> 
> As for "secure" deletion...  Why doesn't someone just write a simple
> user-space program to do that.  True, it wouldn't handle calls to unlink(),
> but one would think that someone could modify the library really quick
> (provided no one does a system call directly, but uses the libc interface
> instead).  I think this would be much better for everyone involved.
> 
> Some problems with my idea...
> 
> Static-linked executables would need to be recompiled
> Library would need to be modified on "secure" systems
> 
> If all you want is a way to force a file to go away from the command line,
> just rewrite rm.

From my understanding of ffs, this would not be sufficiant. As a file
grows, it is possible that the data is copied from its initial location
to a new one. To not just give a false sense of security these block
fragments would have to be over written after the data is copied, or
some of the data could still be sitting on the drive after you think it
is gone.

Tim.


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