On 04/15/2014 09:56 AM, Matthew Black wrote: > From: Doug Barton [mailto:do...@dougbarton.us] >> When you say "clear the disk allocated to programs" what do you mean >> exactly? > > Seriously? When files are deleted, their sectors are simply released to the > free space pool without erasing their contents. Allocation of disk sectors > without clearing them gives users/programs access to file contents previously > stored by other users/programs. > > As to why this is a problem, well, as they write in some math textbooks, the > answer is trivial and left as an exercise to the reader. Well, usually > trivial. > > matthew black > california state university, long beach > >
Bruce Schneier gave a plug for bleachbit - it does a reasonable job of trying to clean things up for you. > -----Original Message----- > From: Doug Barton [mailto:do...@dougbarton.us] > Sent: Monday, April 14, 2014 7:48 PM > To: nanog@nanog.org > Subject: Re: [[Infowarrior] - NSA Said to Have Used Heartbleed Bug for Years] > > On 04/14/2014 05:50 PM, John Levine wrote: >> In article <534c68f4....@cox.net> you write: >>> On 4/14/2014 9:38 AM, Matthew Black wrote: >>>> Shouldn't a decent OS scrub RAM and disk sectors before allocating >>>> them to processes, unless that process enters processor privileged >>>> mode and sets a call flag? I recall digging through disk sectors on >>>> RSTS/E to look for passwords and other interesting stuff over 30 >>>> years ago. >>> >>> I have been out of the loop for quite a while but my strongly held >>> belief is that such scrubbing would be an enormous (and intolerable) >>> overhead ... >> >> It must be quite a while. Unix systems have routinely cleared the RAM >> and disk allocated to programs since the earliest days. > > When you say "clear the disk allocated to programs" what do you mean > exactly? > > > > > -- Glen Wiley KK4SFV
