On Tue, 2005-07-26 at 13:09, Laurence wrote: > On Tue, 2005-07-26 at 08:09 -0600, Robin Laing wrote: > > Mike McCarty wrote: > > > Is there a secure file delete available for ext3 file systems? > > > > > > Mike > > > > Possibly encrypt the data in the first place? > > > > http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6481 > > > > -- > > Robin Laing > > > > how about opening the file & writing zeros to it? I don't remember the specs but there are specifications published by the U.S. Government for what constitutes secure deletion of files from magnetic media. This requires a certain number of rewrites over the same sectors the file was in and I think a specific set of patterns. Over writing a file once is usually not sufficient. There are residual traces of what was written to the drive that with the right tools can be recovered in some cases. Of course if you are disposing of a hard drive the only secure method of disposal is to take a hammer to it. A few years ago a study was conducted where they bought used hard drives from ebay. A variety of recovery methods were used and the researchers were able to recover a wide variety of personal information including SSNs, credit cards, etc. on a significant number of the drives purchased. -- Scot L. Harris webid@xxxxxxxxxx No matter what happens, there is always someone who knew it would.
