Re: SDD partitioning and allocations

[Jeffrey Walton <noloader@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 3:12 PM <tomas@tuxteam.de> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 01:03:23PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
> > On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 12:14 PM <rhkramer@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Thursday, July 10, 2025 10:41:18 PM David Christensen wrote:
> > >
> > > > On 7/10/25 04:07, songbird wrote:
> > > [...]
> > > > Be sure to do a secure erase before you put the SSD's into service:
> > >
> > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Erase#Secure_erase
> > >
> > > Why do you recommend that? Are you assuming the SSDs songbird got are used, or do you recommend that even for new SSDs -- if so, why?
> >
> > >From <https://www.zdnet.com/article/malware-found-on-new-hard-drives/>:
> >
> >     ... Practice "safe sectors" and scan, or preferably wipe, all drives
> >     before bringing them into the ecosystem.  Dont assume that a drive is
> >     going to be blank and malware free. Trust no one. Same goes for USB
> >     flash drives - you never know what's been installed on them.
>
> I have a hard time imagining how a malware on a disk can do
> anything once you've put new file systems on it.
>
> Of course, if you mount their file systems unchanged...

I suspect it is a bigger problem on WIndows, which most malware is
written for and where derives get automounted on insertion:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_malware_infection_of_the_United_States_Department_of_Defense>.

But I don't think it is limited to Windows. I recall a recent thread
about maliciously corrupt filesystems affecting Linux:
<https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2025/06/03/2>. The kernel
would not fix it because they said users should not mount a corrupt
filesystem. Ubuntu had to create and apply patches because of
automounting for users.

Jeff