James <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Hey everyone, > > I am wondering, is there any software I can use with Linux that can scramble > everything on my hard disk while running in memory, so I can prepare for a > new install? I want it to be impossible to recover deleted files. > > Also what of shredders? There is one in the gnome desktop, how does it work? > Does it follow the blocks in the inode table and overwrite with garbage or > whatever? If I were to write software like this, do I need to run it as a > kernel module? Can I do it entirely in C by dereferencing pointers? I am > still a bit of an amateur with assembly language. > > And the software that recovers deleted files that the police use etc, know > any programmes like this?
looking to cover your tracks? :P dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/drive # like hda do that a few times, it'll take a while as the SHA generation is slow. use /dev/random if you want to be really paranoid, but then you'll need to sit around moving the mouse to generate entropy (lest you use the net-card entropy patch) military shredding consists of writing patterns of all 0s, then all 1s, then alternating, then random data, i think in excess of 8 times. HDDs have a lot of magnetic memory. but of course retreiving data which has been overwritten a few times is expensive. i doubt the police are going to want to do that if you're just using an illegal copy of XP. with the recent stories of big corps conducting audits of companies, though, don't be suprised. big corporation is watching you. -- Damien Elmes [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
