ShredOS 2020.02

ShredOS is a USB bootable small linux distribution with the sole purpose of securely erasing your disks using the program nwipe.

This version of Shredos includes the latest nwipe master, Smartmontools, a hexeditor hexedit, that can be run in the second virtual terminal, ALT-F2, hdparm for wiping using the drives internal firmmware and loadkeys for setting the keyboard you are using. i.e. loadkeys uk, loadkeys fr etc.

ShredOS boots very quickly and depending upon the host system can boot in as little as 2 seconds. Nwipe will then list the disks present on the host system. You can then select the methods by which you want to securely erase the disk/s. Nwipe is able to simultanuosly wipe multiple disks using a threaded software architecture.

For an upto date list of supported wipe methods see the nwipe page.

• Quick erase - Fills the device with zeros, one round only.
• RCMP TSSIT OPS-II - Royal Candian Mounted Police Technical Security Standard, OPS-II
• DoD Short - The American Department of Defense 5220.22-M short 3 pass wipe. 1,2,& 7.
• DoD 5220.22M - The American Department of Defense 5220.22-M full 7 pass wipe. 1-7
• Gutmann Wipe - Peter Gutmann's method. (Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory)
• PRNG Stream - Fills the device with a stream from the PRNG.
• Verify only - This method only reads the device and checks that it is all zero.

Nwipe also includes the following pseudo random number generators:

• mersenne
• twister
• isaac

Obtaining and writing shredos to a USB flash drive, the easy way !

You can of course compile shredos from source but that can take a long time and you can run into all sorts of problems if your not familiar with compiling an operating system. So if you just want to get started with using shredos and nwipe then just download the shredos image file and write it to a USB flash drive. Please note this will over write the existing contents of your USB flash drive.

Download the shredos image file from here

Check it's not corrupt by running the following command and comparing with the checksum below:
$ sha1sum shredos.img.tar.gz
bddee6b8313b31c8ff8bd8e704708081ed3f7680  shredos.img.tar.gz

Unzip the image file
$ gunzip shredos.img.tar.gz
$ tar xvf shredos.img.tar

Write the .img file to your USB flash drive
dd if=shredos.img of=/dev/sdx (where sdx is the device name of your USB drive, this can be obtained from the results of sudo fdisk -l)

Some things to note:

• ShredOS has three tty terminals, ALT-F1 (Where nwipe is initially launched), ALT-F2 (A virtual terminal), ALT-F3 (console log, login required which is root with no password).
• The version of nwipe that runs in the default terminal will automatically restart when you exit it, either at the end of a wipe or using CONTROL-C to abort. So if you want to run nwipe in the traditional way, along with any command line options you require, then use the second terminal ALT-F2, as an example, you could then use the command nwipe --nousb --logfile=nwipe.log etc. If you do use ALT-F2 to run a second copy of nwipe, please remember that if you already have one copy of nwipe already wiping the second copy of nwipe will hang on starting, therefore nwipe in the default terminal should be left at the drive selection screen to prevent the second occurence of nwipe from hanging. Alternatively, a second occurrence of nwipe could be started by specifying the drive on the command line, i.e.nwipe /dev/sdc etc.

The latest ShredOS now includes the following:

• smartmontools package, Nwipes ability to detect serial numbers on USB devices now works on USB bridges who's chipset supports that functionality. This also now works in ShredOS 20200405.
• You can now set the type of keyboard you are using. Type loadkeys uk, loadkeys us, loadkeys fr, loadkeys cf, loadkeys by, loadkeys cf, load cz etc. See /usr/share/keymaps/i386/ for full list of keymaps.

Examples are: (azerty:) azerty, be-latin1, fr-latin1, fr-latin9, fr-pc, fr, wangbe, wangbe2

(bepo:) fr-bepo-latin9, fr-bepo

(carpalx:) carpalx-full, carpalx

(colemak:) en-latin9

(dvorak:) ANSI-dvorak, dvorak-ca-fr, dvorak-es, dvorak-fr, dvorak-l, dvorak-la, dvorak-programmer, dvorak-r, dvorak-ru, dvorak-sv-a1, dvorak-sv-a5, dvorak-uk, dvorak, no

(fgGIod:) tr_f-latin5, trf

(include:) applkey, backspace, ctrl, euro, euro1, euro2, keypad, unicode, windowkeys

(olpc:) es, pt

(qwerty:) bashkir, bg-cp1251, bg-cp855, bg_bds-cp1251, bg_bds-utf8, bg_pho-cp1251, ... by, cf, cz, dk, es, et, fi, gr, il, it, jp106, kazakh, la-latin1, lt, lv, mk, nl, nl2, no, pc110, pl, ro, ru, sk-qwerty, sr-cy, sv-latin1, ua, uk, us (for the full list see /usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty)

• hdparm is also available for those that want to do a firmware supported wipe. A firmware wipe is a planned enhancement to nwipe.

Compiling shredos and burning to USB stick, the harder way !

The ShredOS system is built using buildroot. The final system size is about 12MB but due to minimim fat32 partition size, the ending image is about 37MB and can be burnt onto a USB memory stick with a tool such as dd or Etcher.

You can build the image by doing:

$ git clone https://github.com/PartialVolume/shredos.2020.02.git
$ cd shredos
$ make shredos_defconfig
$ make
$ ls output/images/shredos*.img
$ cd output/images
$ dd if=shredos-20200412.img of=/dev/sdx (20200412 will be the day you compiled, sdx is the USB flash drive)

shredos is based on buildroot

Buildroot is a simple, efficient and easy-to-use tool to generate embedded Linux systems through cross-compilation.

The documentation can be found in docs/manual. You can generate a text document with 'make manual-text' and read output/docs/manual/manual.text. Online documentation can be found at http://buildroot.org/docs.html

To build and use the buildroot stuff, do the following:

1. run 'make menuconfig'
2. select the target architecture and the packages you wish to compile
3. run 'make'
4. wait while it compiles
5. find the kernel, bootloader, root filesystem, etc. in output/images

You do not need to be root to build or run buildroot. Have fun!

Buildroot comes with a basic configuration for a number of boards. Run 'make list-defconfigs' to view the list of provided configurations.

Please feed suggestions, bug reports, insults, and bribes back to the buildroot mailing list: buildroot@buildroot.org You can also find us on #buildroot on Freenode IRC.

If you would like to contribute patches, please read https://buildroot.org/manual.html#submitting-patches