Posts by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
(DIR) Post #AE0BpzjflF3KuU7jo8 by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2021-12-02T18:44:30.930Z
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One: Finding Thinkpads “ugly” is an indicator of a very superficial sense for aesthetics. Two: I’ve been told that early Saabs are pretty much thinkpads when it comes to cars. But that may be more of an European thing.
(DIR) Post #AE0Gho1juPqc3CUNqS by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2021-12-02T19:05:45.995Z
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One: Finding Thinkpads “ugly” is an indicator of a very superficial sense for aesthetics. Two: I’ve been told that early Saabs are pretty much thinkpads when it comes to cars. But that may be more of an European thing. To be more specific, my father drives a Saab 900 cabriolet since 2009, which he bought secondhand for I believe somewhat around 6000–7000 €. It’s officially an oldtimer now, but it still runs nicely. (Being an oldtimer also has legal benefits here in Germany, such as being exempt from certain environmetal regulations.) Of course, it needs to see a mechanic more often nowadays, just as an aging man needs to see a doctor more often, but it still runs nicely. Before that, he drove a Saab 900 turbo for about fifteen years, which he also bought as a used car. And it was quite fast, too. I remember him doing 220–230 km/h (that’s about 140 mph) on the autobahn with me on the passenger seat. Fun times!
(DIR) Post #AICJRiSyKboK0NSavI by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2022-04-07T06:35:01.471Z
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Yo, Luke, you’re being too clinical about words! You of all people! If you’re being pitnicky, just differentiate “addiction” from “dependence”. The German word for “addiction” is “Sucht”, cognate to German “Seuche” (*plague*) or “sickness” in English, but by its phonetical similarity, it also has a connotation with “suchen” (*seeking*). For that reason alone, I view it as incredibly apt to describe “a sickness of seeking certain pleasures”, that is an addiction. I find that people use “addiction” in English in exactly the same way. Wikipedia offers a broader definition of the term (whilst slightly contradicting itself) and calls a dependence on a substance characterised by withdrawal symptoms a, well, “substance dependence”, which I find more fitting if you’re being nitpicky about it. Video game addiction and gambling addiction are nowadays clinically recognized as addiction.In reality, I’d argue, there is an almost smooth descent from habit to addiction, but not entirely seamless, sort of like a phase transition; and another one from addiction to dependence. And like matter, substances and behaviours will vary in their melting and boiling points. Liquid helium only freezes at temperatures barely above absolute zero! People have the tendency to argue where they fall on that spectrum to judge whether they should worry; many may even say that an addiction that cannot develop into a dependence cannot be that bad. But the thing is that being on that spectrum is already bad in itself, and the further down you are, the worse you are off.If people say stuff like “pornography addiction isn’t a thing”, porn addicts in denial will go “See? Watching pornography is all healthy, you can’t get addicted because there are no withdrawal symptoms!”. No, Luke. Tell them they are addicted, tell it like it is. Of course, not everyone watching pornography is addicted; to many it really *is* just a bad habit (which they often don’t realise to be bad, it’s just a habit). But others clearly are addicted: They pathologicaly seek it out, despite knowing it is harmful to them. In the same vein, people can be addicted to all sorts of other things, like gambling or smoking weed or browsing the web without being dependent on it.
(DIR) Post #AICLKIRorxdjBuVjcm by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2022-04-07T06:56:05.840Z
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However, the essential point you make is great: Don’t bargain with the devil. He is not a courteous visitant. Do not let him in and do not let him stay. Once you let the devil into your mind, he will bite on to it and begin eating on it until he has consumed it all. Removing the devil is harder than keeping him out. And in fact, the devil is actually not a single parasite, but an entire tribe of parasites that will multiply.And this is why I have yet again another qualification to make: To remove the bugs inside your mind, you have to be very meticulous. You have to remove all of them; and their eggs. Quitting your bad habit at once is just cleaning out your mind. It may work – if the devil hasn’t infested you too heavily. But maybe he has. You can still get lucky, but I wouldn’t count on it! Your chances seem higher if you conceive a plan about cleaning out your mind more thoroughly and carry it out in stages. And even after you have removed it all, it isn’t over: Now you have to be very vigilant and stomp out every single bug you see as soon as you seet it with absolutely no excuses. Only if you do that, after a while, you may actually totally eradicate the disease.That is to say: It clearly can help to quit an addiction step-by-step, provided that you have made a clear plan upfront for a short frame of time to which you have to stick tenaciously. This is very different from leaving some bugs inside and saying “Yeah, I’ll remove them later, what harm can they do?”. This is to avoid convincing yourself you have removed all bugs when in reality you simply coudn’t in one session for the sheer amount of them. Then you cannot allow any thought of your addiction manifest, lest it will fester. If you do that, you will appreciate the cleanliness in your mind and will find that refraining from your habit is actually *easy*.
(DIR) Post #AICLj7tLFn6NgwDwgq by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2022-04-07T07:00:34.916Z
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Also, I see you coming back to pornography as an example. The point can more generally be made about sexuality as an example. There is an [excellent talk by C. S. Lewis on sexual morality](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RkZXZx6HCI); I highly recommend it.
(DIR) Post #AMrcJeqPaSqeUGXLMW by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2022-08-24T20:13:46.246Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@mattock@poa.st “This doen’t seem very forward thinking” isn’t really much of a critique and apodictically claiming “human interaction is becoming digital” as if one has no power over one’s personal behaviour isn’t much of an argument. Luke is specifically speaking of *online* communities (in the sense of*online only* or *online mainly*). People will of course use the internet for meeting up, yes, but the clear message is that you should just try to live your life offline and only use the internet on suitable occasions, not as a substitute for real life.
(DIR) Post #AMreGkSaS2uewZ8KbA by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2022-08-24T20:39:55.184Z
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@mattock@poa.st “This doen’t seem very forward thinking” isn’t really much of a critique and apodictically claiming “human interaction is becoming digital” as if one has no power over one’s personal behaviour isn’t much of an argument. Luke is specifically speaking of *online* communities (in the sense of *online only* or *online mainly*). People will of course use the internet for meeting up, yes, but the clear message is that you should just try to live your life offline and only use the internet on suitable occasions, not as a substitute for real life.
(DIR) Post #AMreTXpii1bVXx3VFg by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2022-08-24T20:42:14.064Z
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@mattock@poa.st “This doen’t seem very forward thinking” isn’t really much of a critique and apodictically claiming “human interaction is becoming digital” as if one has no power over one’s personal behaviour isn’t much of an argument. Luke is specifically speaking of *online* communities (in the sense of *online only* or *online mainly*). People who know each other in real life will of course also use the internet for organisational matters and maybe chat a bit here and there, yes – but that’s different from having an online community. The clear message is that you should just try to live your life offline and only use the internet on suitable occasions, not as a substitute for real life.
(DIR) Post #AMriuLS5FYNWmZ2CsS by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2022-08-24T21:31:54.012Z
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The forum had a certain potential or at least a promise: (1) In contrast to any of the myriad of alt right / dissident right discord servers out there, it felt off-the-grid and more private or reclusive – probably due to its outdated technology and hence its invisibility to the prevailing social media sphere. Some of the older web fora that still exist today have the same sort of appeal – like an oasis amidst a desert of the braindead social media. (2) It yet offered a space for talking about the intellectual interests of alt right / dissident right people or people who have become disillusioned with the current world, and especially in light of modern technologisation / digitalisation.The latter point is something which can hardly be actualised in real life, for two reasons: One, it’s just a statistical reality that people with these sorts of interests are too rare to gather in an organic fashion; this is aggravated by the social cost of openly admitting such interests in polite society. Communities with such interests just don’t form naturally beyond the internet. Two, even if such a community was to emerge offline, it would then lack anonymity, which is a quality in its own right. You mentioned how followers of your channel make you cringe online, but seem well-adjusted offline. In my experience, the converse also happens for special topics. In my mind, it is way less weird to seek an online community for certain topics than a corresponding offline community. (And the most awkward thing to do is of course for online communities to actually meet up offline. That you’ve made a positive experience with this speaks of the quality of your channel, I guess.)In short, the forum could maybe have been something which has no substitute, neither offline or online. This alone isn’t a justification for its existence, of course.You speak of the forum as if it had been an inherently bad idea, but I somewhat disagree. You’ve made it clear that you’ve felt too embarrassed for its users. But this has maybe been a consequence of the people you have attracted with your channel by the use of memes. The forum quickly had adopted imageboard aesthetics, tone and parlance – as well as attitudes. In my opinion, that has been to its detriment. Maybe it could have worked otherwise. I don’t find it too hard to imagine a place like what you’ve hoped the forum to be.However, I still think you’ve been right to shut down the forum. It just hasn’t been healthy.
(DIR) Post #AQVlhdlKKPgeAPdCe8 by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2022-10-14T06:02:04.131Z
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@supreme_neet@kraut.zone Following the cartoonish notion of “imagination is your greatest gift” into adulthood directly leads to drag queen degeneracy and trans identity lunacy. Imagination is only as harmless as the imaginer is innocent. Luke somehow didn’t know this yet, which surprises me a bit because it’s been blatantly obvious even from later childhood on: Recall of the annoying children who are “creative” and like to think of themselves as “imaginative” – and they all turn out gay or otherwise demonically corrupted. Fantasy people are suspicious. However, I also didn’t fully realise this before I was 27 either and maybe I just happened to live in an environment where that’s been more obvious.@luke By the way, Luke, “dreamless sleep” isn’t really a thing; a healthy man always dreams in his sleep, he just doesn’t always remember it. And so in your dreams, you will or will not be affected by demons regardless of whether you remember it or not, regardless of whether you had a “dreamles sleep” or not. A possible way of dealing with demons coming for you in your sleep is perhaps to practise lucid dreaming, that is gaining and retaining awaraness while dreaming. I haven’t (successfully) tried it yet, but the idea is to gain control over your dreams so to banish the demons arising in them.I also think that one can again qualify the general message here as well (as other commenters did): I think it’s really *fantasy* and not *imagination* that is harmful. Mathematics for instance requires a certain imagination which is qualitatively very different from fantasy. Is there anything evil about mathematics? Imagination is the ability and process to form mental images at your will. Fantasy is the tendency or practise to indulge in thoughts and concepts that are not real.What do you think of that, Luke? By the way, aren’t you interested in a bit of conversation about these things that you talk about in your videos? I rarely see you respond to comments, which I think is a bit of a pity.
(DIR) Post #AT6fuQsLtN31AGbJ5c by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2023-02-27T13:51:34.390Z
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A substiantally faster way of wiping a disk with sufficiently random data is to temporarily encrypt it and then override it with zeroes, see https://security.stackexchange.com/a/83321 (note that the specific commands are deprecated by now, but the general principle still applies; consult the man pages for cryptsetup). On a weak system with a large disk, this can save hours.
(DIR) Post #ATBOgtzE8Q1bxwZvLU by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2023-03-01T20:32:11.835Z
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So, by chance I happen to be in a situation where I have to securely erase an old solid state drive. I have done some research and I have two remarks on that which you may find helpful: (1) As Lumor has hinted at, tools like shred or so do little to nothing to securely erase a particular file on solid state drives. This is because of the controller of such a drive, that handles the actual writes (and thus deletions): Blocks wear out quite quickly on solid state drives, which is why most, if not all, controllers implement wear leveling. Whenever a file is overwritten, instead of writing over the already allocated blocks, free blocks are written if possible and their corresponding logical block addresses (of the old, allocated blocks) are just remapped to the respective new ones (of the new, freshly written blocks). The data in the old, allocated blocks is never overwritten. Instead the drive merely suffers more (meaningless) wear. Thus: **Securely erasing *specific* files on a solid state drive is impossible**. None of the above applies to hard disk drives. (2) Securely “erasing” entire solid state drives, however, *is* possible, but only indirectly so: (a) Most securely, one encrypts the entire drive to begin with. “Securely erasing” the drive then just amounts to forgetting the key. Whichever cryptographic tool one has used for doing so, one can try to use its specific commands for erasing the keys or the entire encryption header on the drive, but by the above point (1), it seems to me that there is no guarantee that the key will actually be erased (yet perhaps there is some benefit to it, like making it harder to find the actual key on the drive). (b) Manufacturers may actually implement an implicit encryption themselves in the controller of the drive. In this case, the controller of the drive once generates a key, which it uses to encrypt and decrypt all data written to and read from the drive. Generally, a hardware feature, called “secure erase”, is then offered to –actually erase– said key and generate a new one instead, rendering all previously written data unreadable. See https://superuser.com/a/856491 for more.Since you try to educate people on proper privacy and data security, please make an update! Thanks, Luke!
(DIR) Post #ATBOlJ6mfrHX2RDJWi by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2023-03-01T20:33:00.034Z
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So, by chance I happen to be in a situation where I have to securely erase an old solid state drive. I have done some research and I have two remarks on that which you may find helpful: (1) As Lumor has hinted at, tools like shred or so do little to nothing to securely erase a particular file on solid state drives. This is because of the controller of such a drive, that handles the actual writes (and thus deletions): Blocks wear out quite quickly on solid state drives, which is why most, if not all, controllers implement wear leveling. Whenever a file is overwritten, instead of writing over the already allocated blocks, free blocks are written if possible and their corresponding logical block addresses (of the old, allocated blocks) are just remapped to the respective new ones (of the new, freshly written blocks). The data in the old, allocated blocks is never overwritten. Instead the drive merely suffers more (meaningless) wear. Thus: **Securely erasing *specific* files on a solid state drive is impossible**. None of the above applies to hard disk drives. (2) Securely “erasing” entire solid state drives, however, *is* possible, but only indirectly so: (a) Most securely, one encrypts the entire drive oneself to begin with. “Securely erasing” the drive then just amounts to forgetting the key. Whichever cryptographic tool one has used for doing so, one can try to use its specific commands for erasing the keys or the entire encryption header on the drive, but by the above point (1), it seems to me that there is no guarantee that the key will actually be erased (yet perhaps there is some benefit to it, like making it harder to find the actual key on the drive). (b) Manufacturers may actually implement an implicit encryption themselves in the controller of the drive. In this case, the controller of the drive once generates a key, which it uses to encrypt and decrypt all data written to and read from the drive. Generally, a hardware feature, called “secure erase”, is then offered to –actually erase– said key and generate a new one instead, rendering all previously written data unreadable. See https://superuser.com/a/856491 for more.Since you try to educate people on proper privacy and data security, please make an update! Thanks, Luke!
(DIR) Post #ATBOpPcSPPXWODzC9w by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2023-03-01T20:33:44.577Z
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So, by chance I happen to be in a situation where I have to securely erase an old solid state drive. I have done some research and I have two remarks on that which you may find helpful: (1) As Lumor has hinted at, tools like shred or so do little to nothing to securely erase a particular file on solid state drives. This is because of the controller of such a drive, that handles the actual writes (and thus deletions): Blocks wear out quite quickly on solid state drives, which is why most, if not all, controllers implement wear leveling. Whenever a file is overwritten, instead of writing over the already allocated blocks, free blocks are written if possible and their corresponding logical block addresses (of the old, allocated blocks) are just remapped to the respective new ones (of the new, freshly written blocks). The data in the old, allocated blocks is never overwritten. Instead the drive merely suffers more (meaningless) wear. Thus: **Securely erasing *specific* files on a solid state drive is impossible**. None of the above applies to hard disk drives. (2) Securely “erasing” entire solid state drives, however, *is* possible, but only indirectly so: (a) Most securely, one encrypts the entire drive oneself to begin with. “Securely erasing” the drive then just amounts to forgetting the key. Whichever cryptographic tool one has used for doing so, one can try to use its specific commands for erasing the keys or the entire encryption header on the drive, but by the above point (1), it seems to me that there is no guarantee that the key will actually be erased (yet perhaps there is some benefit to it, like making it harder to find on the drive). (b) Manufacturers may actually implement an implicit encryption themselves in the controller of the drive. In this case, the controller of the drive once generates a key, which it uses to encrypt and decrypt all data written to and read from the drive. Generally, a hardware feature, called “secure erase”, is then offered to –actually erase– said key and generate a new one instead, rendering all previously written data unreadable. See https://superuser.com/a/856491 for more.Since you try to educate people on proper privacy and data security, please make an update! Thanks, Luke!
(DIR) Post #ATBP1hx24qlUihTO1Q by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2023-03-01T20:35:57.894Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
So, by chance I happen to be in a situation where I have to securely erase an old solid state drive. I have done some research and I have two remarks on that which you may find helpful: (1) As Lumor has hinted at, tools like shred or so do little to nothing to securely erase a particular file on solid state drives. This is because of the controller of such a drive, that handles the actual writes (and thus deletions): Blocks wear out quite quickly on solid state drives, which is why most, if not all, controllers implement wear leveling. Whenever a file is overwritten, instead of writing over the already allocated blocks, free blocks are written if possible and their corresponding logical block addresses (of the old, allocated blocks) are just remapped to the respective new ones (of the new, freshly written blocks). The data in the old, allocated blocks is never overwritten. Instead the drive merely suffers more (meaningless) wear. Thus: **Securely erasing *specific* files on a solid state drive is impossible**. None of the above applies to hard disk drives. (2) Securely “erasing” entire solid state drives, however, *is* possible, but only indirectly so: (a) Most securely, one encrypts the entire drive oneself to begin with. “Securely erasing” the drive then just amounts to forgetting the key (and its passphrase). Whichever cryptographic tool one has used for doing so, one can try to use its specific commands for erasing the keys or the entire encryption header on the drive, but by the above point (1), it seems to me that there is no guarantee that the key will actually be erased (yet perhaps there is some benefit to it, like making it harder to find on the drive); in any case, as long one has used a strong passphrase for the key itself, it should not matter whether it has been erased or not – it’s indecipherable, hence the entire encrypted drive is indecipherable as well. (b) Manufacturers may actually implement an implicit encryption themselves in the controller of the drive. In this case, the controller of the drive once generates a key, which it uses to encrypt and decrypt all data written to and read from the drive. Generally, a hardware feature, called “secure erase”, is then offered to –actually erase– said key and generate a new one instead, rendering all previously written data unreadable. See https://superuser.com/a/856491 for more.Since you try to educate people on proper privacy and data security, please make an update! Thanks, Luke!
(DIR) Post #ATBPCkHZkXcP8ULS0O by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2023-03-01T20:37:51.388Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
So, by chance I happen to be in a situation where I have to securely erase an old solid state drive. I have done some research and I have two remarks on that which you may find helpful: (1) As Lumor has hinted at, tools like shred or so do little to nothing to securely erase a particular file on solid state drives. This is because of the controller of such a drive, that handles the actual writes (and thus deletions): Blocks wear out quite quickly on solid state drives, which is why most, if not all, controllers implement wear leveling. Whenever a file is overwritten, instead of writing over the already allocated blocks, free blocks are written if possible and their corresponding logical block addresses (of the old, allocated blocks) are just remapped to the respective new ones (of the new, freshly written blocks). The data in the old, allocated blocks is never overwritten. Instead the drive merely suffers more (meaningless) wear. Thus: **Securely erasing *specific* files on a solid state drive is impossible**. None of the above applies to hard disk drives. (2) Securely “erasing” entire solid state drives, however, *is* possible, but only indirectly so: (a) Most securely, one encrypts the entire drive oneself to begin with. “Securely erasing” the drive then just amounts to forgetting the key (and its passphrase). Whichever cryptographic tool one has used for doing so, one can try to use its specific commands for erasing the keys or the entire encryption header on the drive, but by the above point (1), it seems to me that there is no guarantee that the key will actually be erased (yet perhaps there is some benefit to it, like making it harder to find on the drive); in any case, as long one has used a strong passphrase for the key itself, it should not matter whether it has been erased or not – it’s indecipherable, hence the entire encrypted drive is indecipherable as well. (b) Manufacturers may actually implement an implicit encryption themselves in the controller of the drive. In this case, the controller of the drive once generates a key (at initial operation of the drive), which it uses to encrypt and decrypt all data written to and read from the drive. Generally, a hardware feature, called “secure erase”, is then offered to –actually erase– said key and generate a new one instead, rendering all previously written data unreadable. However, one has to trust the manufacturer for this, which is why (a) is preferable. Hence, this is also an argument for *always encrypting your solid state disks* if they are to contain sensitive data. See https://superuser.com/a/856491 for more.Since you try to educate people on proper privacy and data security, please make an update! Thanks, Luke!
(DIR) Post #ATBPrGEwLs63pkQoeO by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2023-03-01T20:45:16.857Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
So, by chance I happen to be in a situation where I have to securely erase an old solid state drive. I have done some research and I have three remarks on that which you may find helpful: (1) As Lumor has hinted at, tools like shred or so do little to nothing to securely erase a particular file on solid state drives. This is because of the controller of such a drive, that handles the actual writes (and thus deletions): Blocks wear out quite quickly on solid state drives, which is why most, if not all, controllers implement wear leveling. Whenever a file is overwritten, instead of writing over the already allocated blocks, free blocks are written if possible and their corresponding logical block addresses (of the old, allocated blocks) are just remapped to the respective new ones (of the new, freshly written blocks). The data in the old, allocated blocks is never overwritten. Instead the drive merely suffers more (meaningless) wear. Thus: **Securely erasing *specific* files on a solid state drive is impossible** (without directly tinkering with the drive). None of the above applies to hard disk drives. (2) Securely “erasing” entire solid state drives, however, *is* possible, but only indirectly so: (a) Most securely, one encrypts the entire drive oneself to begin with. “Securely erasing” the drive then just amounts to forgetting the key (and its passphrase). Whichever cryptographic tool one has used for doing so, one can try to use its specific commands for erasing the keys or the entire encryption header on the drive, but by the above point (1), it seems to me that there is no guarantee that the key will actually be erased (yet perhaps there is some benefit to it, like making it harder to find on the drive); in any case, as long one has used a strong passphrase for the key itself, it should not matter whether it has been erased or not – it’s indecipherable, hence the entire encrypted drive is indecipherable as well. (b) Manufacturers may actually implement an implicit encryption themselves in the controller of the drive. In this case, the controller of the drive once generates a key (at initial operation of the drive), which it uses to encrypt and decrypt all data written to and read from the drive. Generally, a hardware feature, called “secure erase”, is then offered to –actually erase– said key and generate a new one instead, rendering all previously written data unreadable. However, one has to trust the manufacturer for this, which is why (a) is preferable. Hence, this is also an argument for *always encrypting your solid state disks* if they are to contain sensitive data. (3) As a last remark, it is apparently possible to physically remove the controller and directly access the solid state drive (with certain hardware), giving one full control over the hardware, making targeted writes/deletions possible – at least in principle: I haven’t researched this, but one wonders how would find the relevant data without the controller mapping logical block addresses to physical ones. I presume one has to be technically quite sophisticated for doing something like this. In any case, that method sounds infeasable for a typical user.See https://superuser.com/a/856491 for more.Since you try to educate people on proper privacy and data security, please make an update! Thanks, Luke!
(DIR) Post #ATBROKqeL6N9dVP9ii by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2023-03-01T21:02:24.284Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
So, by chance I happen to be in a situation where I have to securely erase an old solid state drive. I have done some research and I have three remarks on that which you may find helpful: (1) As Lumor has hinted at, tools like shred or so do little to nothing to securely erase a particular file on solid state drives. This is because of the controller of such a drive, that handles the actual writes (and thus deletions): Blocks wear out quite quickly on solid state drives, which is why most, if not all, controllers implement wear leveling. Whenever a file is overwritten, instead of writing over the already allocated blocks, free blocks are written if possible and their corresponding logical block addresses (of the old, allocated blocks) are just remapped to the respective new ones (of the new, freshly written blocks). The data in the old, allocated blocks is never overwritten. Instead the drive merely suffers more (meaningless) wear. Thus: **Securely erasing *specific* files on a solid state drive is impossible** (without directly tinkering with the drive or relying on the manufacturer). One can, however, use blkdiscard to at least make the solid state drive trim or unmap the corresponding allocated blocks; in some drives this is then even followed by writing zeroes to the respective blocks – in any case the controller then removes the respective logical blocks addresses, making it impossible to access the underlying data without physically accessing the drive. None of the above applies to hard disk drives. (2) Securely “erasing” entire solid state drives, however, *is* possible, but only indirectly so: (a) Most securely, one encrypts the entire drive oneself to begin with. “Securely erasing” the drive then just amounts to forgetting the key (and its passphrase). Whichever cryptographic tool one has used for doing so, one can try to use its specific commands for erasing the keys or the entire encryption header on the drive, but by the above point (1), it seems to me that there is no guarantee that the key will actually be erased (yet perhaps there is some benefit to it, like making it harder to find on the drive); in any case, as long one has used a strong passphrase for the key itself, it should not matter whether it has been erased or not – it’s indecipherable, hence the entire encrypted drive is indecipherable as well. (b) Manufacturers may actually implement an implicit encryption themselves in the controller of the drive. In this case, the controller of the drive once generates a key (at initial operation of the drive), which it uses to encrypt and decrypt all data written to and read from the drive. Generally, a hardware feature, called “secure erase”, is then offered to –actually erase– said key and generate a new one instead, rendering all previously written data unreadable. However, one has to trust the manufacturer for this, which is why (a) is preferable. Hence, this is also an argument for *always encrypting your solid state disks* if they are to contain sensitive data. (3) As a last remark, it is apparently possible to physically remove the controller and directly access the solid state drive (with certain hardware), giving one full control over the hardware, making targeted writes/deletions possible – at least in principle: I haven’t researched this, but one wonders how would find the relevant data without the controller mapping logical block addresses to physical ones. I presume one has to be technically quite sophisticated for doing something like this. In any case, that method sounds infeasable for a typical user.See https://superuser.com/a/856491 and https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/659938 for more.Since you try to educate people on proper privacy and data security, please make an update! Thanks, Luke!
(DIR) Post #ATBRWkjxxNBoFwIBm4 by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2023-03-01T21:03:59.127Z
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So, by chance I happen to be in a situation where I have to securely erase an old solid state drive. I have done some research and I have three remarks on that which you may find helpful: (1) As Lumor has hinted at, tools like shred or so do little to nothing to securely erase a particular file on solid state drives. This is because of the controller of such a drive, that handles the actual writes (and thus deletions): Blocks wear out quite quickly on solid state drives, which is why most, if not all, controllers implement wear leveling. Whenever a file is overwritten, instead of writing over the already allocated blocks, free blocks are written if possible and their corresponding logical block addresses (of the old, allocated blocks) are just remapped to the respective new ones (of the new, freshly written blocks). The data in the old, allocated blocks is never overwritten. Instead the drive merely suffers more (meaningless) wear. Thus: **Securely erasing *specific* files on a solid state drive is impossible** (without directly tinkering with the drive or relying on the manufacturer). One can, however, use blkdiscard to at least make the solid state drive trim or unmap the corresponding allocated blocks; in some drives this is then even followed by writing zeroes to the respective blocks (that is, if the manufacturers claims so and keeps his promise) – in any case the controller then removes the respective logical block addresses, making it impossible to access the underlying data without physically accessing the drive. None of the above applies to hard disk drives. (2) Securely “erasing” entire solid state drives, however, *is* possible, but only indirectly so: (a) Most securely, one encrypts the entire drive oneself to begin with. “Securely erasing” the drive then just amounts to forgetting the key (and its passphrase). Whichever cryptographic tool one has used for doing so, one can try to use its specific commands for erasing the keys or the entire encryption header on the drive, but by the above point (1), it seems to me that there is no guarantee that the key will actually be erased (yet perhaps there is some benefit to it, like making it harder to find on the drive); in any case, as long one has used a strong passphrase for the key itself, it should not matter whether it has been erased or not – it’s indecipherable, hence the entire encrypted drive is indecipherable as well. (b) Manufacturers may actually implement an implicit encryption themselves in the controller of the drive. In this case, the controller of the drive once generates a key (at initial operation of the drive), which it uses to encrypt and decrypt all data written to and read from the drive. Generally, a hardware feature, called “secure erase”, is then offered to –actually erase– said key and generate a new one instead, rendering all previously written data unreadable. However, one has to trust the manufacturer for this, which is why (a) is preferable. Hence, this is also an argument for *always encrypting your solid state disks* if they are to contain sensitive data. (3) As a last remark, it is apparently possible to physically remove the controller and directly access the solid state drive (with certain hardware), giving one full control over the hardware, making targeted writes/deletions possible – at least in principle: I haven’t researched this, but one wonders how would find the relevant data without the controller mapping logical block addresses to physical ones. I presume one has to be technically quite sophisticated for doing something like this. In any case, that method sounds infeasable for a typical user.See https://superuser.com/a/856491 and https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/659938 for more.Since you try to educate people on proper privacy and data security, please make an update! Thanks, Luke!
(DIR) Post #ATBVVdUdod5BJ3qaX2 by z@videos.lukesmith.xyz
2023-03-01T21:48:35.539Z
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@chuck Yeah, I know, this is the video I was referring to. It doesn’t matter anyhow, it’s an old comment and doesn’t apply anymore in my view …