Securely delete files...

[David Shaw]

On Aug 21, 2008, at 10:54 PM, Faramir wrote:
> Atom Smasher escribió:
>
>> that's basically what sfill (part of the srm package from thc)  
>> does, per
>> partition. the other way of doing basically the same thing:
>>  dd if=/dev/urandom of=/partition/tmp-file ; rm /partition/tmp-file
>
>  Now, a lot of coffee cups latter, I am thinking maybe it is harder to
> "securely" delete a single file than a whole disk or partition...  
> since
> with just 1 file, you must overwrite the place where the file is
> located, and if we want to erase the whole disk, it should be matter  
> of
> filling it up to full capacity with some debris data... there is no  
> need
> to "aim" to a specific spot...

Exactly right.  Shredding a whole disk is like using a hammer.   
Shredding a single file involves a scalpel.  It's a lot harder - not  
impossible, but harder - to use a scalpel.

David