secure file delete?
 

Does anyone know of a way to securely delete files from an SD card on Maemo?? I've sold my n810 and need to get rid of passwords. Thanks for any help.

Re: secure file delete?
 

I should point out that it's set up as dual boot and the main system is on the SD card. I could just replace the card but I'd rather not have to rebuild everything.

Re: secure file delete?
 

It's hard to secure wipe an SD card iirc. Or any other Flash storage for that matter. This is due to wear leveling. I could be wrong but that's the overall idea I got from reading various sites and articles.

Re: secure file delete?
 

Copy several times big Files with only "00" Bytes on your device until the device is full. It would help in the most cases to secure delete enought for ever.

Re: secure file delete?
 

I have this exact same problem with my N900 (getting a replacement from Nokia because of a dead pixel). What i did was to just create big files that fill upp all remaining space on the devices, after I removed the passwords by normal means (rm):

If thats to slow, like when filling up the 26GB partition i did
to fill it with zeros instead or pseudo-random data.

dd will give an error when the device is full. In my case I had to run it several times on my 26GB partition considering its formated with FAT32 which only supporst 4GB files.

However there might still be a problem with this, atleast with normal SSDs, I dont know how the flash in the phones are constructed.
In SSDs there is extra space to replace weared out cells on the device, which I think is inaccessible by normal means. If a cell is weared out it might also be so that you can read from it but not write, which means your password would permanently be left on there.

Though this is only theoretical, I might even be wrong :P
I have no practical tests to back up my claims.

Re: secure file delete?
 

Even that may not be sufficient. The flash cards have some extra cells in spare, and so your earlier data may have been rolled out and your 00 bytes go to other cells.

If you want to securely delete the content of the flash card: Just destroy the card completely.

Re: secure file delete?
 

If you're so worried about passwords, why store them in the first place?

Re: secure file delete?
 

Use encrypted storage for them from the start.. a simple gpg encrypted text file works great :)

Re: secure file delete?
 

Yes, not the best method. And I know about the problem. But it is better than nothing.
And compare, how many bytes are images, mp3 or videos and how many bytes are your sensitive password files?

I'm not sure, but I guess this could cause a problem with the warranty when you destroy the internal flash before you send the Device back to Nokia. :)

Re: secure file delete?
 

As a note, you can use a program like shred on a Linux desktop on the MMC device that the N8x0/N900 exports over USB (when it's unmounted), but as mentioned, that probably won't be terribly effective with flash memory. If you can't think of anything else, then you can always try it, but don't rely on it. Also be aware that if you're using a journalled file system on the card, it's usually a moot point anyhow.

Re: secure file delete?
 

I'd also point out that unless your passwords are store in some predictably-structured file format, it may be pretty difficult to tell that it's a password even if they hunt through the bits. Things like JPEGs are generally pretty easy to recover, but arbitrary text files? Not so much, if you don't know what you're looking for in the first place.
On a side note, I'd presume structured data like credit card numbers could potentially be found, even if there were false positives, no?