Security enhancement for UBIFS with secure erase feature

[Atlant Schmidt]

Carsten:

  Unfortunately, the data sheets for many Flash parts
  specifically prohibit re-writing a page, even if
  you're driving the bits towards more zeroes. I
  think you'll find this is especially true for MLC
  devices.

                                 Atlant

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-mtd-bounces at lists.infradead.org [mailto:linux-mtd-bounces at lists.infradead.org] On Behalf Of Stelling Carsten
Sent: Monday, September 05, 2011 12:01
To: linux-mtd at lists.infradead.org
Subject: Security enhancement for UBIFS with secure erase feature

Hi everybody,

When building security relevant (embedded) applications, personal privacy
is of major importance.

Therefore it would be nice to have a configuration option to invalidate the
content of a deleted file in UBIFS. This feature shall allow an application to
ensure that, when a file is deleted, its contents are fully erased from the flash.
I.e. that each time a block is marked for erase, this block is written all zeros.
Writing zeros without erasing an entire page should be possible by design.

Giving such an option on a file by file basis (ioctl) would be optimal, because
wiping out the content of a deleted file is time and resource consuming and
not acceptable for all kinds of applications using UBIFS.

Are there any plans for such a security enhancement in UBIFS?

Regards

Carsten




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