intrigeri: > hi, > > https://tails.boum.org/forum/Wiping_Flash_Media:_Problem_in_TAILS_Doc/ > reveals two serious problems in a section of our documentation: first, > it's unclear and may easily lead to confusion; second, it's wrong: the > paper we refer to clearly states that "Free space overwriting left > most of the data on the drive".
I read the thread and I agree that the doc says something quite different from the paper. That's a mistake. The current doc basically says that in order to securely delete a file from a USB you could delete the file and then the run "Wipe available diskspace" even if you have other files on the volume. Which is wrong according to the paper and the comments on the thread. I don't want to keep the lingo "overwriting the entire visible address space" and we anyway need to provide a method to actually do so. Suggesting to delete all files first and then wipe all the disk space would probably be wrong as well since then the space taken up by the file system structure won't be wiped twice. We could propose to wipe the entire device and then reformat it. But srm doesn't seem to run on block devices: I get "Warning: /dev/sdc is not a regular file, rename/unlink only!". On the other hand shred seems to work as usual. It is included in Tails but doesn't have a graphical interface. If my thinking is right I don't think we can document a GUI procedure to really wipe a USB stick at the moment. The solution could be either: - to integrate shred in nautilus-wipe, and propose "Wipe the entire device" for block devices or - to make srm work on block devices.
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