Linux A Complete Operating System Optimized For Anonymous Surfing

[hotshot05]

what I would do in case of so called emergency where I have to cleanup the hdd is a simple command. just boot off a linux live cd/floppy/usb and run the below command on your hdd. its like peeing on your hdd

for i in {1..3}
do
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb oflag=direct
done

What exactly does this do?

And this only works on the first HDD right?
Only on sdb?

 

[hotshot05]

How that is done, from BIOS ?

Don't turn on Persistence when creating the live boot disk. It would be read only (as far as I know)

 

[booo]

What exactly does this do?

And this only works on the first HDD right?
Only on sdb?

this reads from the urandom device (which emits garbage) and writes it to the hdd and repeats for 3 times. sdb here is just an example (second hdd connected to the box on sata. scsi to be precise.), you have to find out the correct hdd by running lsblk command which lists out all the block devices. since this writes from the beginning of the block device. all the partition info will be gone. if you want to delete a specific partition. you should use something like /dev/sda1 etc...

since its a very simple command; it works on almost any linux system. including rooted android mobile phones with busybox.

the correct command would be dd if=/dev/urandom of=<hdd device> of=direct

PS: if you need even a faster way to do that you should read from /dev/zero which will basically zerofill the entire hdd. basically /dev/zero is faster than /dev/urandom. This also is a good method when you are selling your hdd to someone else.

WARNING: after this, even forensics team wont be able to retrieve any data from the device.

 

[ayanavish]

How that is done, from BIOS ?

http://www.techrepublic.com/forums/discussions/how-to-add-write-protection-to-flash-drives/
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2297584

But not sure where it would stand compared to a write protected CD / DVD.

 

[TEUser2K1]

This is where I like those pen drives with read only switch. Find it difficult to source them.

 

[vivek.krishnan]

Is PPTP safe enough a protocol to download torrents over without the ISP noticing or is it better to go with open vpn protocol.
i understand pptp is compromised but in the context of usage.

Depends. If you are being targeted, then openVPN is the best bet. If you just need basic tunneling, and do not think you are being targeted - PPTP is good enough - but I would stay away.