shred

In this article we present a practical use of strace. shred is a tool used to securely delete files by overwriting them with random data several times. The theory is that when erasing files normally a ghost of the data is left behind. Overwriting the file several times is supposed to clear this ghost, and render the file unrecoverable. Of course today we have logging filesystems, SSDs and backup systems that all may retain data of the file, so shred is not that useful. [Read More]