bugtraq - Re: *nix data wipe tools

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Message-ID: <20041217180537.B62F1BC180@spike.porcupine.org>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 13:05:37 -0500 (EST)
From: wietse@...cupine.org (Wietse Venema)
To: bugtraq@...urityfocus.com
Subject: Re: *nix data wipe tools

David Cannings:
> Thomas C. Greene wrote:
> > I've posted the final versions of a few simple, free shell scripts that i've 
> > been working on to make data hygiene more convenient on *nix systems. Thanks 
> > to list members who helped test them and contributed improvements.
> 
> Is there any specific advantage of these scripts over bcwipe?
> 
> http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/bcwipe_unix.htm

There's a general problem with applications that go through the
file system to destroy the contents of a file.  Unless one uses
very simplistic disk harware and file systems, there is no guarantee
that overwrite requests will actually overwrite the intended bits.
For a example, Solaris 10 ZFS uses copy-on-write, to avoid corruption
when the system crashes in the middle of an update; many disk drives
have write caches built-in so only the last overwrite request takes
effect; and non-volatile memory "disks" have a limited number of
write cycles and try to avoid hot spots.

	Wietse