SecrecySupportTeam / secrecy

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2704486
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File deletion improvement #133

Closed Doplgangr closed 6 years ago

Doplgangr commented 9 years ago

The original classes are quite messy. After some thoughts and experimentation here are some improvements

Doplgangr commented 9 years ago

Not sure about that, but I tried it on an actual device (Nexus 4) and it worked. File was originally discoverable by Filedigger and with subsequent deletion it was no longer discovered.

Have recieved one of the user who deleted his files and regretted, also reported that file diggers reports nothing.

It is possible that flash memories will be worn out if such actions are done in a prolonged manner, but does it outweight the possible security improvement?

L-Henke commented 9 years ago

Filedigger might report nothing because it couldn't read the complete files, but that doesn't mean that everything of that file has been deleted. That is almost impossible on current flash memories.

Of course your method might overwrite parts of the original file, but we should not sell the users that their files are securely deleted, because that simply is not true.

If your are interested in the details, here is a scientific paper about secure file deletion from flash memory: https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/fast11/tech/full_papers/Wei.pdf

Quote from the conclusion:

We found that none of the available software techniques for sanitizing individual files were effective.

Graveen commented 6 years ago

This PR worth merging, for the 0 byte ghost file remaining.