A Key-gen-config file that autodeletes?

[Werner Koch]

On Tue, 11 Sep 2001 01:58:13 -0700 (PDT), Len Sassaman said:

> Ah. Here's a reason to have a wipe function in GnuPG, similar to "pgp -w".
> Simply rm'ing a file that has the passphrase in it might not be enough for
> some people.

So replace rm(1) by shred(1).  However, Colin Plumb says about shred
(shred --help):

| CAUTION: Note that shred relies on a very important assumption:
| that the filesystem overwrites data in place.  This is the traditional
| way to do things, but many modern filesystem designs do not satisfy this
| assumption.  The following are examples of filesystems on which shred is
| not effective:
| 
| * log-structured or journaled filesystems, such as those supplied with
|   AIX and Solaris (and JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, etc.)
| 
| * filesystems that write redundant data and carry on even if some writes
|   fail, such as RAID-based filesystems
| 
| * filesystems that make snapshots, such as Network Appliance's NFS server
| 
| * filesystems that cache in temporary locations, such as NFS
|   version 3 clients
| 
| * compressed filesystems

The wiping should be a feature of the filesystem.


-- 
Werner Koch        Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur
g10 Code GmbH      et non datur, nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est.
Privacy Solutions                                        -- Augustinus