wipe utility

[jkinz at kinz.org (Jeff Kinz)]

On Fri, Sep 17, 2004 at 09:16:58AM -0400, Cole Tuininga wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-09-16 at 22:05, James R. Van Zandt wrote:
> > As I interpret this, "wipe" will work with any of these journaling
> > modes to overwrite data at its primary location on the disk.  However,
> > with "data=journal" there may be another copy of the data in the
> > journal that "wipe" would not reach.
> 
> Another option with an ext3 partition is to simply remount it
> temporarily as an ext2 partition.  In the majority of cases, this would
> allow wipe/shred/whatever to work as advertised.

One extra step:
after mounting as an ext2 you first have to create a file that uses up
all the free space on the disk, filling that with some neutral data, or
shredding it to delete it.  

Otherwise you potentially leave multiple copies of the "undesirable
data" around in sectors previously used and discarded by ext3.

Granted they won't be as easily recovered, but they are recoverable to
some degree.  Depends on how paranoid you are.  

On an NSA "related" contract in the 80's I heard rumors of the hard
drive cleaning techniques at the NSA which involved the use of a welding
gringder, a metal shredder and an arc furnace. 

Technician tips a lump of cooling, gelid metal towards the programmer:

"OK - you can take your hard drive out of the building now."

-- 
Linux/Open Source.  Now all your base belongs to you, for free.
============================================================
Idealism:  "Realism applied over a longer time period"

Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA.