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A
Anonymous
October 9, 2009
Question

Secure delete (shred) using ColdFusion

  • October 9, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 868 views

Is there a way to securely delete (shred) a file using ColdFusion?  I assume that CFFILE Action="Delete" is not a secure delete.

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    1 reply

    T
    TLC-IT
    Inspiring
    October 12, 2009

    "Shredding" is not offered in ColdFusion.  Furthermore, the ability to actually do such a thing depends entirely upon the underlying filesystem (and perhaps also the network).  Generally speaking, in my experience it is not possible to obliterate a disk-file such that no piece of it truly remains anywhere.

    A
    Anonymous
    October 12, 2009

    Your answer doesn't surprise me since I was unable to find anything about this subject.

    Our situation is that we are using a 3rd party Toolkit to form-fill a PDF template with a user's personal data and allowing them to view it or email it to themselves.  The form-filled PDF gets saved to the server before we redirect the user to it and then we run a sweep procedure to delete them  on a regular basis.  We're just looking for a way to securely remove these documents from the server so no trace is left.

    Thanks for your response.

    J
    JR__Bob__Dobbs-qSBHQ2
    Inspiring
    October 12, 2009

    You might try a 3rd party utility for handling the shredding.

    1. Instead of deleting the target files in your CF code move them to a directory 'shred1'

    2. Invoke your 3rd party shred utility with CFSCHEDULE, Windows schedule, or *nix cron job to shred the contents of the directory 'shred1'

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