Re: Just got an interesting project...

Am 05. Oct, 2006 schwätzte JT Moree so:

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> George Toft wrote:
>> Requirements:
>> 1. Deleted files (say, qmail messages after pickup) are shredded upon
>> deletion. Immediately upon delete. Since an application is performing
>> the delete, I must assume "rm" is not being issued, so I can't
>> substitute "shred" in its place.
>
>> What about #1? Any ideas?
>>
>
> if you dont control the application how are you going to do anything
> about it anyway? If you do control the app then just call the libraries
> to do the shredding or make a system call to shred or write your own
> shred routine.
>
> But keep in mind that on journalling file systems and most modern
> filesystems the shred command is not 100% effective since the OS may
> move the file without your knowing about it.

Most modern disks also do funky stuff and lie to the OS.

Would having the filesystem be encrypted and not available to root take
care of the issue?

If the drive is physically stolen the items that were still in the queue
are even more vulnerable than the deleted items.

I asked on the LOPSA irc channel about a filesystem that would do a shred.

LD_PRELOAD came up there as well.

As did a suggestion for an encrypted filesystem that shreds all unused
blocks every 15 minutes and a suggestion for a circular filesystem.

purgefs came up. I just glanced at it. Looks interesting.

http://www.am-utils.org/docs/purgefs/index.html

Another almost-suggestion was to automagically GPG stuff as it enters the
queue such that only the intended recipient can open it.

Would a trojaned libc be able to circumvent all these things? In other
words, should all the apps that might be used be statically compiled and
sucked in to memory at boot? Would that be enough?

ciao,

der.hans
-- 
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