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A Method of Traceless File Deletion for NTFS File System

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Cyberspace Safety and Security (CSS 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13547))

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Abstract

NTFS is the most widely used disk partition format today, especially in personal computers and mobile storage devices, for its high security, excellent performance, and good convenience. After a file is normally deleted in NTFS file system, it can be still recovered by analyzing the file records and properties in MFT, and the deletion leave traces in the operation system which can be detected by the forensic tools. If the computer/USB device is lost or stolen, files on the hard disk, including the files that has been deleted, can be leaked which leaves a huge security risk. To securely and completely delete a file, this paper proposes a method of traceless file deletion for Windows NTFS file system. Experimental results show that the deleted file cannot be recovered and the deletion operation leaves no trace even by the forensic tools.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFB0804104), National Natural Science Foundation of China (62102209), Shandong Provincial Key Research and Development Program (2021CXGC010107, 2020CXGC010107, 2019JZZY020715), the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (ZR2020KF035).

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Correspondence to Shujiang Xu .

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Xu, S., Wang, F., Wang, L., Chang, X., Yang, T., Yang, W. (2022). A Method of Traceless File Deletion for NTFS File System. In: Chen, X., Shen, J., Susilo, W. (eds) Cyberspace Safety and Security. CSS 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13547. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18067-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18067-5_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-18066-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-18067-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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