Document a GUI way to securely erase Flash media via Gnome Disks
Originally created by Tails on #5323 (Redmine)
As “pointed out in the forum”: -https://tails.boum.org//forum/Wiping_Flash_Media:_Problem_in_TAILS_Doc/- (dead link, sorry), former versions of our documentation on secure deletion, was wrongly stating that overwriting twice the available diskspace [on a USB or solid-state drive] is usually, but not always, sufficient to securely clean the drive.
This 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 by Wei & al..
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.
So we cannot document a GUI procedure to truly wipe a USB stick at the moment.
Feature Branch: doc/16282-buster-doc
Parent Task: #16282 (closed)
Related issues
- Related to #8047 (closed)
- Related to #10629 (closed)
- Blocks #16711 (closed)