Unlike magnetic devices, flash usually don't leave any significant traces of previously recorded data. Writing new data usually is page erase - page write cycle. So, really, it does not matter what data will be written. So, fast urandom is good enough. To be paranoid you could write it twice.
There is another thing in flash-based devices that could be potentially dangerous. Flash devices usually have some spare memory to use instead of failed blocks. And once internal processor finds bad block it just replaces it with spare one. And data recorded in bad block still stay there and can't be erased by usual means. From the other side, if flash begin to fail, than it fails fast and become unuseable. So it makes no any sense to keep such device at all and it could be just crashed or microwaved to destroy all data,
But better approach is to use shred -v /dev/sda adding whatever options you think you need to carefully erase all data. This command is part of coreutils and every single linux distribution have it out of the box.
Also, some disks have internal "secure erase" command, but I would not depend on it since nobody except manufacturer knows what that command really do.
It was always a huge mistery for me why anybody would use any Apple crap at all.
Every single Apple device I ever played with is a total crap from all possible angle from useability to repairability. That things are unuseable. Every single one, from that insane single-button mouse to all that modern iPhones and iPods. Even relatively conventional MacBooks have permanent and irrepaireable design flaws that make them not the best choice even if you wipe out that shitty macOS and install Linux. Moreover, even if you need to use some software that exist only for macOS it is easier to run that piece of shit in VM on any PC or, say as a second system on old "hackintoshed" ThinkPad T450 from garbage bin.
How people who fall to using that crap can't see it is a total crap? And I'm not talking about total vendorlock and incompatibility of Apple products with anything else.
Does marketing have so much control over not only minds, but over such unconscious thing like ergonomics?
The story that got me was how iphones were misreporting signal strength.
That totally pissed me off
Then I caught my iphone sending GIGABYTES every 2 days to AT&T, in other words it was sending everything I was doing to at&t even my micromovements (the gyro log). I told AT&T about it because they were trying to charge me overages, and they reversed 2 months of overages and gave me 100 dollars credit. This was a "Shut the F up about this" bribe
And it workd, but then I went to reddit.com/r/conspiracy and blabbed about it later. I didn't sign or agree to any NDA btw, they were just trying to stop the inquiry by me.
My iphone was also turning itself back on after I explicitly turned it off. And I caught it delaying a while and turning back on, meaning they were hoping that I would be convinced it was off, and then turned back on.
The rationale for me turning it off was that I needed it to charge as fast as it could and when it's ON it uses battery, so it took 3-5x longer to charge
I was with the wall of text until you tried to claim a plugged in iphone takes 3-5x longer. Not to mention missing a chunk of the story where I'm guessing they somehow tried to get your posts taken down?? These larps suck.
On my 2019 laptop I went thru a tutorial on unhiding files, found the hidden temp folders and low and behold found pictures of me , my girlfriend at the time pictures We were not taking when We used the laptop.. topless pictures staring at the LCD screen. Windows was taking snapshots of us and saving to hidden temp file!! That you know was being sent to Microsoft during their auto updates. Go back to desktop builds with no cameras or mics builtin! Less is more these days
they were mostly disheveled pics of me or her from what looked like they were taken everytime to laptop was awakened from sleep. The cool thing was that laptop was disconnected from the internet and used for emergencies or going on road trips for wifi connectivity (that was turned off most the time as well)
SOURCE
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/fast11/tech/full_papers/Wei.pdf
Apple's secure delete gives a false sense of security
TLDR: for SSDs, it's best to use bcwipe, nwipe or similar with DOD standard
For USB's its best to use DD with /dev/random
example: "dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda"
/dev/urandom
/dev/urandom is a source of pseudorandom sequence, /dev/random is "true" random so /dev/random could be slower.
I think for erasing flash-based devices like SSD, USB-sticks or flash cards you could use /dev/urandom with same efficiency.
I learned two things today. Thank you both
Seems like you could do urandom and then do random after that as a 2nd round as time permits.
Unlike magnetic devices, flash usually don't leave any significant traces of previously recorded data. Writing new data usually is page erase - page write cycle. So, really, it does not matter what data will be written. So, fast urandom is good enough. To be paranoid you could write it twice.
There is another thing in flash-based devices that could be potentially dangerous. Flash devices usually have some spare memory to use instead of failed blocks. And once internal processor finds bad block it just replaces it with spare one. And data recorded in bad block still stay there and can't be erased by usual means. From the other side, if flash begin to fail, than it fails fast and become unuseable. So it makes no any sense to keep such device at all and it could be just crashed or microwaved to destroy all data,
Thank you
Could be just cat /dev/random > /dev/sda
But better approach is to use shred -v /dev/sda adding whatever options you think you need to carefully erase all data. This command is part of coreutils and every single linux distribution have it out of the box.
Also, some disks have internal "secure erase" command, but I would not depend on it since nobody except manufacturer knows what that command really do.
It was always a huge mistery for me why anybody would use any Apple crap at all.
Every single Apple device I ever played with is a total crap from all possible angle from useability to repairability. That things are unuseable. Every single one, from that insane single-button mouse to all that modern iPhones and iPods. Even relatively conventional MacBooks have permanent and irrepaireable design flaws that make them not the best choice even if you wipe out that shitty macOS and install Linux. Moreover, even if you need to use some software that exist only for macOS it is easier to run that piece of shit in VM on any PC or, say as a second system on old "hackintoshed" ThinkPad T450 from garbage bin.
How people who fall to using that crap can't see it is a total crap? And I'm not talking about total vendorlock and incompatibility of Apple products with anything else.
Does marketing have so much control over not only minds, but over such unconscious thing like ergonomics?
They also force you to continuously upgrade to the newest version of iPhone in order to be able to use various apps.
And they limit the apps you can use.
Anyway, this is one of the reasons it is standard practice for higher level govt workers to physically destroy their tech with hammers or whatever.
The story that got me was how iphones were misreporting signal strength.
That totally pissed me off
Then I caught my iphone sending GIGABYTES every 2 days to AT&T, in other words it was sending everything I was doing to at&t even my micromovements (the gyro log). I told AT&T about it because they were trying to charge me overages, and they reversed 2 months of overages and gave me 100 dollars credit. This was a "Shut the F up about this" bribe
And it workd, but then I went to reddit.com/r/conspiracy and blabbed about it later. I didn't sign or agree to any NDA btw, they were just trying to stop the inquiry by me.
My iphone was also turning itself back on after I explicitly turned it off. And I caught it delaying a while and turning back on, meaning they were hoping that I would be convinced it was off, and then turned back on.
The rationale for me turning it off was that I needed it to charge as fast as it could and when it's ON it uses battery, so it took 3-5x longer to charge
I was with the wall of text until you tried to claim a plugged in iphone takes 3-5x longer. Not to mention missing a chunk of the story where I'm guessing they somehow tried to get your posts taken down?? These larps suck.
“Secure erase trash” doesn’t even exist anymore. What you want is to encrypt the disc using FileVault and then lose the password.
That's a very good technique for deleting data, and it was recommended in the pdf from which I got the above image.
On my 2019 laptop I went thru a tutorial on unhiding files, found the hidden temp folders and low and behold found pictures of me , my girlfriend at the time pictures We were not taking when We used the laptop.. topless pictures staring at the LCD screen. Windows was taking snapshots of us and saving to hidden temp file!! That you know was being sent to Microsoft during their auto updates. Go back to desktop builds with no cameras or mics builtin! Less is more these days
they were mostly disheveled pics of me or her from what looked like they were taken everytime to laptop was awakened from sleep. The cool thing was that laptop was disconnected from the internet and used for emergencies or going on road trips for wifi connectivity (that was turned off most the time as well)
Fb people and others always have their camera covered.