what is meant by shred?

murshed · 04-13-2003, 12:02 PM

once i was trying to discover kde3.0 more and more .. so i went through the control center .. until i reached a window where it said something like:

do u want a pop up confirmation window for the following (tick for yes)

delete
send to trash
shred

well.. i know delete and send to trash .. but what is shred?!

delete will delete the file immidiately .. send to trash in obvious .. what what is shred? it just deletes the file .. thats what i knew ..

is there any difference?

thanks

jailbait · 04-13-2003, 12:16 PM

Shred means to overwrite your file with garbage and then delete it. That way the FBI, KGB, and CIA cannot read your deleted files.

murshed · 04-13-2003, 12:52 PM

cool , i thought it would be something like the shredding machine ...

ok if the file was a binary file .. or a song .. what would it do for it in this case? how will it be filled by garbage?

jailbait · 04-13-2003, 01:03 PM

I don't know. Try man shred. Try the following link:

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/feature...forensics.html

FreakboY · 04-13-2003, 10:37 PM

shrek is a movie! LOL!
just kidding... i'm bored!

laterz..

cuckoopint · 04-13-2003, 10:50 PM

Quote:

ok if the file was a binary file .. or a song .. what would it do for it in this case? how will it be filled by garbage?

In the end, its all 1's and 0's, so it doesn't matter what kind of file it is - it will still fill it with garbage. But beware- forensic people are smart. They can actually use nice, big magnets to find previous overwrites (or HD formats) - kind of like x-rays and studying overpaintings. cool, eh? What does that tell you? If you have sensitive data, better keep it on paper and burn it. Or make sure you go into a great hassle removing your data (preferably exposing to Huge magnets, followed by melting...)