Caja Wipe

An extension for Caja to securely delete files , using the secure-delete programme.

Description

Caja Wipe is a small Python 3 extension for the Caja file manager (the default file manager in MATE) that adds options to the right-click menu to securely delete files. srm is called when deleting files. The deletion algorithm is this:

*      1 pass with 0xff

*      5 random passes. /dev/urandom is used for a secure RNG if available.

*      27 passes with special values defined by Peter Gutmann.

*      5 random passes. /dev/urandom is used for a secure RNG if available.

*      Rename the file to a random value

*      Truncate the file

As an additional measure of security, the file is opened in O_SYNC mode and
after each pass an fsync() call is done.  srm writes 32k blocks for the
purpose of speed, filling buffers of disk caches to force them to flush and
overwriting old data which belonged to the file.

Examples

You want to completely remove a document with your bank account information from your computer.

You need to delete a private GPG key from your secret folder.

You just really, really, don't want anyone to see that embarassing photo from grade school...

Building and Installing

Dependencies

• caja
• python-caja (Arch users install python2-caja)
• xautomation
• secure-delete

Debian (and Debian-based distros)

a) Install common build dependencies sudo apt-get install debhelper build-essential

b) Download source code

git clone https://github.com/Fred-Barclay/Caja-Wipe.git
cd Caja-Wipe
dpkg-buildpackage
cd .. && sudo dpkg -i caja-wipe_0.8.9_all.deb

If you get a similar message to this when installing caja-wipe:

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of caja-wipe:
 caja-wipe depends on python-caja (>= 1.08); however:
  Package python-caja is not installed.
 caja-wipe depends on xautomation (>= 1.07); however:
  Package xautomation is not installed.
 caja-wipe depends on secure-delete (>= 3.1-6); however:
  Package secure-delete is not installed.

Simply run sudo apt-get -f install

Errors like
dpkg-buildpackage: error: failed to sign .dsc and .changes file
are expected and can be safely ignored.

c) Restart caja
caja -q

Other distros (not system-wide)

mkdir -r ~/.local/share/caja-python/extensions/
git clone https://github.com/Fred-Barclay/Caja-Wipe.git
cd Caja-Wipe/src
cp caja-wipe.py ~/.local/share/caja-python/extensions/caja-wipe.py

Restart Caja
caja -q

Limitations

(Adapted from the man page of srm):

• NFS: Beware of NFS. You can't ensure you really completely wiped your data from the remote disks, especially because of caching.

• Raid: Raid Systems use stripped disks and have got large caches. It's hard wipe them.

• Swap: For secure deletion of the swap space, use sswap. Due to the great difficulty in setting up a generic implementation to sswap, and the potential for system damage this command might cause, Caja Wipe does not offer an option for this so you will have to use the command line.

• Some of your data might have a temporary (deleted) copy somewhere on the disk.

  If this is a concern, the secure-delete suite, which should be installed as a dependency to Caja Wipe on Debian-based distros (Debian, Linux Mint, etc), comes with the sfill command which can be used to delete all free space on your hard drive. Beware that this may take a very long time. If you abort the process before it ends, you may end up with extra files in various locations that may take up a great deal of space.

Credits

Portions of this README were copied and modified from the man page to srm; copyright van Hauser / THC [email protected].

License

Caja Wipe is dual-licensed in source code form under the GPLv2, or, at your option, any later version; and custom, highly-permissive licensing terms.

In .deb format, caja-wipe is licensed solely under the GPLv2.

The text for both licenses can be found in the COPYING file. A list of authors is in the AUTHORS file.

Copyright (C) 2016 Caja Wipe authors.