On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 3:12 PM <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 01:03:23PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote: > > On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 12:14 PM <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > On Thursday, July 10, 2025 10:41:18 PM David Christensen wrote: > > > > > > > On 7/10/25 04:07, songbird wrote: > > > [...] > > > > Be sure to do a secure erase before you put the SSD's into service: > > > > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Erase#Secure_erase > > > > > > Why do you recommend that? Are you assuming the SSDs songbird got are > > > used, or do you recommend that even for new SSDs -- if so, why? > > > > >From <https://www.zdnet.com/article/malware-found-on-new-hard-drives/>: > > > > ... Practice "safe sectors" and scan, or preferably wipe, all drives > > before bringing them into the ecosystem. Dont assume that a drive is > > going to be blank and malware free. Trust no one. Same goes for USB > > flash drives - you never know what's been installed on them. > > I have a hard time imagining how a malware on a disk can do > anything once you've put new file systems on it. > > Of course, if you mount their file systems unchanged...
I suspect it is a bigger problem on WIndows, which most malware is written for and where derives get automounted on insertion: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_malware_infection_of_the_United_States_Department_of_Defense>. But I don't think it is limited to Windows. I recall a recent thread about maliciously corrupt filesystems affecting Linux: <https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/06/03/2>. The kernel would not fix it because they said users should not mount a corrupt filesystem. Ubuntu had to create and apply patches because of automounting for users. Jeff
