Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 13 Feb 2002 10:33:33 +0100 | From | Helge Hafting <> | Subject | Re: secure erasure of files? |
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Andreas Ferber wrote:
> I don't know if any filesystem currently relocates blocks if you > overwrite a file, but it's certainly possible and allowed (everything > else except the filesystem itself simply must not care where the data > actually ends up on the disk). > A log-structured fs will write new blocks everytime, afaik. Ext3 with data journalling keeps copies of recently written data in the journal. Now, if you create a "secret" file and then overwrite it you'll still find a copy in the journal until the journal wraps It may not wrap if the next thing you do is umount/shutdown.
A secure rm must know the fs it works with. A better solution is to overwrite the entire partition with garbage. The only perfect way is to destroy the magnetic surfaces though.
Helge Hafting - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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