Re: [PATCH 1/5] WIP: Add syscall unlinkat_s (currently x86* only)

From: Alexander Holler
Date: Tue Feb 03 2015 - 13:02:38 EST


Am 03.02.2015 um 18:48 schrieb Theodore Ts'o:
On Tue, Feb 03, 2015 at 01:48:56PM +0100, Alexander Holler wrote:

E.g. my parents are stull successfully using contact lists on paper. These
are still more readable, easier to handle and smaller than any available
electronic replacement. And they have absolutely no problem to destroy an
old one when they replace it with a new one.

Sort of using crypto, which I think is still the best response to this
particular use case --- the trick is making it easy to use, but that's
a desktop/distro integration problem --- the most secure way to really
make sure information on paper and on an SSD is secure is actually the
same --- you use a shredder.

And this isn't just for "military grade security". There are some
commercial cloud providers which do precisely this, because they know
that their customer's security and their reputation is not easily
valued, and certainly the cost of some piddling flash chips, after
they have been depreciated, is defintiely cheaper than a security
exposure. Look at the estimates of how much money Target lost with
their little security oopsie. Again, this is commercial, not military
security.

Yeah, as I've already admitted in the bug, I never should have use the word secure, because everyone nowadays seems to end up in panic when reading that word.

So, if I would be able to use sed on my mails, I would replace unlinkat_s() with unlinkat_w() (for wipe) or would say that _s does stand for 'shred' in the means of shred(1).

Anyways, as I hopefully still have some years left to live (also I'm writing SW since 30a, I'm not that old as some of you guys and still have to work at least two decades), I might be able to see where we will end up with all that fiasco we've already managed to drive into.

Regards,

Alexander Holler
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