News Via Feature Randomly Deletes

Via has released their new Tru-Delete software that utilises the unique features of their processor family.

The Via C3, Antaur and Eden chips include a random number generator on chip. Tru-Delete works by harnessing this to overwrite sensitive data with a series of random numbers, making it irrecoverable.

The traditional delete function in Windows simply erases pointers to the data and marks as free for overwriting, but leaving the actual data there in the meantime - making it easy for disk experts to recover. More comprehensive delete solutions overwrite the data with a series of zeroes, but random numbers make the whole thing a lot harder to recover - since it is easy to see where a block of zeroes starts and ends. Generating random numbers can be pretty processor intensive, and this can slow down the deleting process. Via's chips, however, do the calculating in hardware, giving a significant speed boost.

The Via Tru-Delete software can be found Here, and is benevolently based on the General Public License, making it tasty open sauce.

 

Personally I think it is a bit irresponsible to release this as open source. Sure I can see the benefits for companies that need to destroy confidential info but (and i'm probably going to the exteme with this) what about the people who could use it to hide the fact that they've been up to illegal things such as having child porn on their pc.

 

There are plenty of (software only) alternatives available already. I use Eraser for my paranoid deleting

Next you'll be saying it's irresponsible to allow net access, or computer use. You can't deny people privacy because some people will hide illegal activities. That's inevitable.

 

people have the human right to privacy, even if they are peadophiles, they still have the right to privacy. it is the job of those enforcing the law to prevent the access of said peadophiles to illegal content, this however does not negate their human right to privacy. its paradoxical, I know, but its the way things are.

also: if we didnt have privacy, then the 'state' could watch whatever we do however we do it regardless of the reasons for doing so. if it takes permitting peadophiles privacy to prevent the human race from becoming 'batteries' (as in "The Matrix") then so be it. People dont like the idea of the possible sacrifice of human life for human freedoms, but they must accept it somewhere... sometime.

Moreover, like I said, its the job of the 'state' to esure theres no content for peadophiles to get which is worth erasing in the first place.

 

if you read it properly, the idea is that the hardware HELPS the software do its task... random numbers are less detectable than a load of 0x00. I doubt the hardware does the deleting itself, and is more of an optimization to help such software.

 

I may have given the wrong impression, but I want to make it clear that I do understand what this does. I'm sure I read something about it on slashdot about 6 months ago. Perhaps I should have put "software only" instead, but please don't bite my head off

 

What difference does making it open source make? Whether it is open source or not people can still use it delete their stuff. Anyway it's not illegal to delete child porn. If they were really desperate, they'd rip out the platters on their HD.

 

somehow I'm sure that still wouldnt prevent data retreval - they did it with floppies.

BTW:
in your sig it says "If you dont have the time to check your spelling and grammar, you dont have the time to post! -Liquid K9" but its been a LONG time since I posted anything but pure jibberish

(though: I do have a medical reason for that, sometimes)

 

Just the same way that Via procs have amazing hardware-level encryption capabilities. It's basically a subfuction of the processor - which technically speaking is just one ungodly-ly fast calculator - which is specifically designed for that purpose. In these cases random numbers and encryption. So instead of needing to add stuff up really fast a bazillion times (which is what all math really is), it can actually get right to what it needs to. The software tells it when to do this and then retrieves the result. Hence a Via 1GHz absolutely owning a P4 3.2GHz in encryption tests (by about six times IIRC).

Yes it could be used irresponsibly, but so can any feature of a computer.

Personally I feel that if you REALLY need to destroy your data, a 12-guage will be in your near future.

I think the department of defense standard for killing data is overwriting the said area with utter crap like seven times, but as it's been said it's much easier to find 00000000000000 than 123094230923905. I still can't figure out how overwriting data the first time doesn't destroy the original stuff, but then again I don't really care since I'm not dumb enough to keep records that could be recovered of anything that I wouldn't want found.

 

On a disk drive, when you overwrite data the 1's are changed to 0's or something similar.

Imagine a rock and then scrawl onto that a word. To delete the word you draw a line through it. If you wanted to recover that word, you simply examine the rock and look at the data minus the line. Easy.

Now when we use a random number generator, imagine scratching randomly over the rock. It makes it much harder to work out what the word was. Do this several times (maybe 10) and you will find it nearly impossible to find what the word was.