Secure File Delete Question

[MJCM]

Hi,

I am working on a .Net application, the application use
System.IO.File.Delete method to delete files, but those deleted files can be
restored through special "undelete software". Is there a way around this ??

I know you can buy "eraser" utils, but i want to handle this from the program itself !!

Thx
MJCM

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

encrypt the using an encryption algorithm right before you use IO.File.Delete, this is how software like McAffee and Norton "Shred" documents, it doesn't prevent specialized un-delete software from recovering the file, but if the file is recovered, it'll be much harder to open the file because of the encryption

if you really want to get paranoid, even if a file is deleted and over ridden so the specialized un-delete program can't recover it, people can use hardware forensics to recover files, but that's usually very expensive

 

[MJCM]

Hi, thx for your answer. Encryption option is not an option (I think, unless you can explain it to me further), because i am deleting Music files and Exe.

So what I can do is with a loop and streamwriter recreate the file (and fill it with zero's and do that several times)

It will be an app that when my laptop starts the user has ten seconds to enter the right key combination else the contents of the laptop (like private data etc etc) will be destroyed. This in cause that my laptop gets stolen.

 

[JuggaloBrotha]

if you're deleting files that you dont want the user to retrieve with any un-delete programs, encryption would be you're best option

here's an article that converts an encryption algorithm from VBScript to C#, and C# is easy to convert to vb.net

http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/091802-1.aspx