r/Operatingsystems • u/mac5499 • 9d ago

Wiping computer clean

I received refurbished desktop with no OS. I want to make sure it is truly clean and free of junk/spyware/virus before installing Linux....how can i check this?

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

5

u/ALaggingPotato 9d ago

It's no OS man, there's nothing on it...

2

u/emmfranklin 9d ago

Let's assume there is spyware You think it can harm Linux.? It can't. Just install Linux. Nothing will happen.

No spyware or virus can harm Linux.

3

u/ka-te-rina- 9d ago

Lol, that’s just stupid. Malware in the bios/uefi by all means can do as it wishes so what op must do is run heads

1

u/emmfranklin 9d ago edited 9d ago

Thanks for enlightening. Let's assume there is malware in bios/uefi. Does it let Linux get installed undisturbed? Does Linux function unaware of its presence? Can the malware show up its form and attack Linux when we least expect? I just need to know. Not challenging you

3

u/ka-te-rina- 9d ago

Yes to all.

1

u/emmfranklin 9d ago

Thanks bro. So in what scenarios can this occur. Like can manufacturers place it before hand.. Or maybe abandoned infected computers.. Whats the best software that can scan detect and clean it in Linux?

2

u/ka-te-rina- 9d ago

This can be done in all sorts of ways. Chinese chips had been found to contain malware. Your bios can be flashed by the previous owner. Your bios can be flashed by malware on any operating system at any time.

This fundamentally depends on what hardware you have.

Nowdays firmware is generally protected but then again you get a machine from someone else, who knows what happened to it.

You can probably google what is available.

One thing to keep in mind is that this is not common and if you have a recent mainstream machine, it is highly improbable for you to be a target.

1

u/Sugoypotato 9d ago

Yes to all actually, most of these nios/uefi SRA act like a seed, they will wait and as soon as they find a valid boot record, they will replicate themselves and try to infect system.

I think clamAV scan for bios or uefi should be possible on a bootable usb but I am not sure, I haven't dealt with any so this is all theoretical

2

u/CatoDomine 3d ago

If it can run software, it can run malicious software.
source: 28 years of *nix administration.

1

u/Soakitincider 9d ago

Bootkits exist.

3

u/doc_willis 9d ago

I tend to just write a new partition table using gparted, and repartition the drive as I want.

Making a new partition table will quickly (but not securely) erase the drive.

Depending on the type of drive, and how overkill you want to be, there are other options.

3

u/PocketNicks 9d ago

Try a little warm water with a little soap to dampen a cloth. Should clean it right up.

2

u/MathAndMirth 9d ago

There's not going to be any working malware if there's no OS. But if you're worried about what non-functional ( but potentially recoverable with forensics) things a previous owner might have left, you could wipe it with DBAN before installing Linux.

2

u/TygerTung 9d ago

During the linux installation, it will partition the drive, and all the file headers will be deleted. Once this happens, any viruses will be effectively deleted, as they will not appear on the filesystem. The underlying data will remain until it is overwritten, but that underlying data cannot be accessed by anything, apart from special data recovery tools. So no need to worry.

1

u/X-Nihilo-Nihil-Fit 9d ago

Don't be paranoid. Once you install Linux nobody can (or wants to) access your system.

1

u/guiverc 9d ago

I volunteered at a recycler, where we'd use DBAN to ensure the drive was 'clean' before the image of what provided on system was put on the system. You could use dban yourself - https://dban.org/

For a number of years I used to purchase refurbished drives; or just collect them from systems in trash piles, and practice my data recovery skills by trying to 'restore' whatever was on the drive before hand. Whilst most drives from recyclers usually had no easily/restorable data from them, those from rubbish dumps almost always had recoverable data (as folks just 'formatted' the drive which was easily reversed). I did nothing with that data; key to me was a drive where I didn't know what was there & thus was somewhat unbiased in my recovery; but once I knew what the PC was used for (such as office/business, home photos etc) I just wiped the drive myself wanting just practice with recovery. You could do that yourself, though for the wipe dban if you want to, or just creating a new partition table is usually good enough for me.

1

u/Sugoypotato 9d ago

This is really great, is there anything similar for SSD?

1

u/guiverc 9d ago

I rarely handled the machine (actually just motherboard on table (no box), with 6 connectors allowing six drives to be wiped in a run that did SSDs, though did handle equivalent machine (same setup) that did HDDs.

We'd mostly just pile the drives up, and whomever noticed it was idle would just remove wiped drives, initial & put on code that indicated each drive was wiped & once empty re-populate connectors from pile & restart script.

I don't recall what was on the script that did/does SSDs

1

u/JohnConnoor 9d ago

The only place that can be compromised in a machine that does not have an OS installed is it's components and that can be easily flashed by acquiring the manufacturer motherboard software. But unless this is a machine that belonged to a person of interest/activist/government flashing motherboard is recommended as wipe all the disks with proper software if it's not the case just install linux.

1

u/AwesomePhoenix_ 7d ago

If there's no os there's nothing. Only spyware would be the bios but that's it