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Other Security Resources! |
Thus files can be hidden in free space. If many copies of the same file are saved and then erased, the chance of getting the contents back becomes higher using the above recovery methods. However, due to the intricacies of ext2 filesystem, the process can only be reliably automated for small files.
A more detailed look at ext2 internals reveals the existence of slack space. Filesystem uses addressable parts of disk called blocks, that have the same size. Ext2 filesystems typically use 1,2 or 4 KB blocks. If a file is smaller than the block size, the remaining space is wasted. It is called slack space. This problem long plagued early Windows 9x users with FAT16 filesystems, which had to use block sizes of up to 32K, thus wasting a huge amount of space if storing small files.
On a 4GB Linux partition, the block size is typically 4K (chosen
automatically when the mke2fs
utility is run to create a
filesystem). Thus one can reliably hide up to 4KB of data per file if
using a small file. The data will be invulnerable to disk usage,
invisible from the filesystem, and, which is more exciting for some
people, undetectable by file integrity checkers using file
checksumming algorithms and MAC times. Ext2 floppy (with a block size
of 1KB) allows hiding data as well, albeit in smaller chunks.
The obscure tool bmap exists to jam data in slack space, take it out and also wipe the slack space, if needed. Some of the examples follow:
# echo "evil data is here" | bmap --mode putslack /etc/passwdputs the data in slack space produced by
/etc/passwd
file
# bmap --mode slack /etc/passwd getting from block 887048 file size was: 9428 slack size: 2860 block size: 4096 evil data is hereshows the data:
# bmap --mode wipeslack /etc/passwdcleans the slack space.
EnGarde Secure Linux
|
Now lets turn to discovering what is out there on the vast expanses of
the disk drive? If looking for strings of text, a simple "strings
/dev/hdaX | grep 'string we need'
" will confirm the presence of string
on the partition (the process *will* take along time). Using a hex
editor on the raw partition can sometimes shed some light on the disk
contents, but the process is extremely messy. Thus further analysis
puts us firmly in the field of computer forensics. The best tool for
snooping around on the disk is The Coroner's Toolkit
by Dan Farmer and Wietse Venema and the tctutils
set of utilities for it. The software provides functionality for gathering
forensics data, recovering files,
analyzing drive contents for changes (using file timestamps), locating
content on disks (using inode and block numbers) and for other fun
forensics tasks. Detailed description of the toolkit goes well beyond
the scope of this paper.
Now lets briefly review how to prevent the adversaries from finding
private data. Several Linux file cleansing utilities exist. All but one can
only be used to wipe files, rather than empty disk space. GNU shred
(by Colin Plumb), srm
(by Todd Burgess), wipe
(by Tom Vier) and srm from thc kit (by THC group, see
http://packetstorm.linuxsecurity.com/groups/thc/). Some use the multiple
random passes as recommended in the above paper and some simply
overwrite the file with zeros once. Some does not work under certain
circumstances or for specific filesystems. As reported in shred man
page "shred relies on a very important assumption: that the filesystem
overwrites data in place". If this condition is not met, no secure
deletion will be performed (with no error message!).
To eliminate the traces of old removed files, one might want to wipe the empty space. The simple method is to use a standard Linux "dd" utility. To wipe the empty space on /home partition use:
Quest for Info
Have you written something you think the Linux and Open Source security
community should know about? Wireless? Network security? Encryption? Interested in posting it on LinuxSecurity.com? |
/tmp
partition might cause some applications to crash,
thus one must be cautious. Utility "sfill
" from thc THC
secure_delete
package (available at
http://packetstorm.linuxsecurity.com/groups/thc/)
can overwrite empty space using more stringent algorithm.It should be noted that swap space can also contain pieces of private data and should be wiped as well if additional security is desired. Another program (sswap) from THC toolkit can be utilized for the purpose.
The important fact to note is that when empty space is wiped, slack space for all files remains intact. If file is wiped (at least using current version of GNU shred), the associated slack space is NOT wiped with it!
The article briefly touches upon hiding, finding and destroying data on Linux filesystems. It should become clear that the area of computer forensics, aimed at recovering the evidence from captured disk drives, has many challenges, requiring knowledge of hardware, operating systems and application software.
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