[Cryptography] Shredding a file on a flash-based file system?

John Denker jsd at av8n.com
Thu Jun 19 09:43:55 EDT 2014


On 06/18/2014 08:57 PM, Thierry Moreau asked:
> 
> Does anyone know if this assumption is reasonable?

Almost any crypto-related assumption about flash-based file
systems is not reasonable.  Ditto for many other modern
hardware systems.  They do too much behind your back,
including moving data from place to place.

The only defense I've seen that makes any sense is to
do full-disk encryption or something similar.  Sometimes
file-by-file encryption suffices.  Then the problem of 
erasing the disk (or file) reduces to the problem of
zeroizing the key.  This is not necessarily trivial in
absolute terms, but it is often easier in relative terms.



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