On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 05:10:13PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote: > 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>. See above: *if* the first thing you do is to make a new file system, the malware data will still be there, in the free blocks, but your (second-rate) operating system won't be able to access it. > 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. Again: irrelevant for a freshly made file system. Now if your operating system tries to mount everything it is presented with, that's another problem (mine doesn't). Cheers -- t
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