On Mon, Jun 19, 2006 at 09:54:54PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: > So, I propose that an option be added to shred email files before > they are ulinked. GNU Shred does an adequate (and fast) job of > this, and is license-compatible with Courier, so it "should" be easy > to implement using the relevant routines from GNU fileutils. > > http://www.gnu.org/software/fileutils/doc/manual/html/fileutils.html > > Since not every FS works well with shred, it should be an option in > the imapd config file. > > Yes, this is not perfect, and has limitations, and can be downright > *slow* if you decide to shred 10,000 files with 25 overwrites, but > is better than nothing, and as I said, "should" be easy to implement. > > Thoughts?
Rather than a full 'shred' operation, a single overwrite of the file with all zeros would be sufficient IMO. Multiple-overwrite shredding is aimed at the possibility that someone will be able to remove the hard drive, take out the platters in a clean-room environment, attach special heads and extra-sensitive electronics, and be able to read data one or more passes below the most recently-written data. This is something which perhaps the military can do, but it's not available to the average Joe Bloggs. A single overwrite with zeros will defeat anyone who tries to undelete files at a Unix shell interface, or even someone who connects to the IDE or SCSI interface and reads blocks directly. I'd say that covers the majority of the threat. Regards, Brian. _______________________________________________ Courier-imap mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/courier-imap
