Devotio

Devotio is a secure disk erasure tool based on DoD 5220.22 M, ATA Secure Erase and encryption-based destruction.

It allows to select the specific device to erase or every disk on your system. It involves:

• HDD
• SSD
• LUKS
• Flash drive
• RAM
• Zram
• Swap

Etymology

The name Devotio comes from an ancient Roman ritual.

In Roman tradition, a devotio (from devoveo, “to vow or consecrate”) was a solemn act in which a general or soldier would sacrifice himself to the gods of the underworld to ensure victory, offering his own life to protect Rome and destroy its enemies.
It symbolized total self-dedication and purification through destruction.

In Athena OS, Devotio inherits that spirit: when you run it, the system sacrifices its own data - completely, irreversibly, and honorably - to guarantee that nothing untrusted or sensitive survives.

It is the digital equivalent of a final vow: once performed, nothing remains to be recovered.

Usage

Devotio is included in Athena OS Live ISO. You can use Devotio to erase devices also on other operating systems.

You can burn Athena OS ISO on a device and land on the Live Environment. Then, run:

sudo devotio

and choose secure erasing between a specific disk or all devices.

A test on a virtual machine HDD sized of 50 GB needed 19 minutes for secure erasing.

Specification

Devotio automatically recognizes the type of devices connected to your system and erases them properly.

HDD

To erase a HDD device, Devotio executes:

• File system formatting
• 3-pass overwriting
• Writing all zeroes
• Writing all ones
• Writing all random data
• multiple-pass overwriting
• LUKS encryption
• LUKS header destruction

SDD

To erase a SSD device, Devotio executes:

• File system formatting
• TRIM command issuing
• ATA Secure Erase running
• LUKS encryption
• LUKS header destruction

LUKS

To erase a LUKS device, Devotio executes:

• Writing all random data
• 3-pass overwriting
• LUKS encryption
• LUKS header destruction

Flash Drive

To erase a Flash device, Devotio executes:

• File system formatting
• 3-pass overwriting
• Writing all zeroes
• Writing all ones
• Writing all random data
• LUKS encryption
• LUKS header destruction

RAM

To erase RAM, Devotio executes:

• Cache drop

Zram

To erase a zram device, Devotio executes:

• Turning off zram device
• Writing all random data
• zram device reset

Swap

To erase a swap device, Devotio executes:

• Turning off swap device
• Writing all zeroes

All data on volatile memories will be deleted at reboot.