Secure Deletion of Trash, and Secure System Cleaner (like CrapCleaner)

[maynoth]

Crap Cleaner is a wonderful program I use for windows.

In the new versions you can set it to securely delete files, by writing them over with 0000000's


I think this would be wonderful for ubuntu, allowing us to securely delete all firefox cache cookies, histories, system trash, and misc files, etc.

[Martje_001]

+1
We only have to add an 'wipe' menu to nautilus!

[u-slayer]

+1 for secure file deletion.

[tomplast]

Hmm I wonder how secure it really would be...

At least we can make it a little harder for someone to recover anything, and if we want a simple deletion which zeroes out the data then maybe chattr with the s-flag will do it :).

[u-slayer]

Secure file deletion is easy.....in the command line

$shred -n 3 --remove [file.ext]

You just need to add an option in the right click menu of nautilus that executes this command.

[maynoth]

how hard would it be to wip up a gui for this command, where you could select folders, and files which need to be securely deleted?

[atlas95]

Good idea!
Can we do this with nautilus-action when we clic on the Trash applet?How?

[smbm]

I'm no expert but doesn't the fact that we use a journalled file system make it more complicated to securely delete files?

[maynoth]

I think this would be wonderfull if it could securely erase trash from your thunderbird, evolution, firefox(cache, download history, cookies, etc...), and other things..

[maynoth]

if there are any programers who could create a simple gui for some of these secure deletion command line tools, and make it so you could clean things like firefox cache and the trash, etc etc... I would be willing to contribute funds for your time an effort. the only stipulation is it would have to be open source GPL3

[u-slayer]

I'm no expert but doesn't the fact that we use a journalled file system make it more complicated to securely delete files?

Long Answer:
From Wikipedia:
On ext3, set the journal mode to ordered data mode (the default for newer versions). In ordered mode, ext3 only journals metadata, not actual data. To find out if you are using ordered data mode, type 'dmesg | grep ordered' (on a Debian GNU/Linux system) and look for a message saying that the partition has been mounted ordered data mode.

Short Answer: NO

[maynoth]

from the shred command manual:

CAUTION:

Note that shred relies on a very important assumption: that
the file system overwrites data in place. This is the traditional way
to do things, but many modern file system designs do not satisfy this
assumption. The following are examples of file systems on which shred
is not effective, or is not guaranteed to be effective in all file sys‐
tem modes:


In the case of ext3 file systems, the above disclaimer applies only in data=journal mode, which journals file data in addition to just metadata. In both the data=ordered (default) and data=writeback modes, shred works as usual. Ext3 journaling modes can be changed by adding the data=something option to the mount options for a particular file system in the /etc/fstab file, as documented in the mount man page (man mount).

[maynoth]

here is how to add this to the nautilus menu


install nautilus-actions via synaptic package manager

launch nautilus actions configuration
-->system--->preferences--->nautilus actions configuration


Add

Label = Shred

Path = shred

Parameters = -fuz %M

Click ok and exit



in terminal type killall nautilus

[likemindead]

Yeah, back in my Windoze days I loved me some CCleaner. I honestly don't know how necessary something like that'd be in Ubuntu but it'd make me feel better a bit. Just residual OS feelings I'm still working out.... :)