On Tue, Sep 09, 2008 at 11:33:20PM -0500, Neil Sikka wrote:
> yea "dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/<hard drive node>" is good. do this a few
> times.
Fwiw, there is a military spec for how to do this "the right way", which
AFAIK, shred implements. One of the things about the military spec is
that random alone isn't sufficient -- you need to do multiple passes
of all zeros, all ones, all of a given pattern, some random, to make sure
that people with extremely sensitive equipment can't reproduce previously
over written bits.
That said, a quick web search ("miltary disk wipe") turned up:
---
Just so you know, if your drive was made around 2001 or so and later,
it's not vulnerable to laboratory microscope attacks. The technology
has changed, and you only need to overwrite data once now. The reason
why the government still requires many overwrites is in case someone
comes out with a similar attack in the future. At least that's what
they said in the SANS GCFA training.
----
(http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-security-4/military-grade-disk-wipe-653786)
FYI,
- Rob
.
