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    • Securely remove information from Tikiwiki database?

    Posted by elandrieu

    We are evaluating wikis for internal use in our organization, including TikiWiki. One of our security requirements for any product that we would implement is that we be able to remove information which should not be on the wiki - and by remove, I mean wipe out any trace of it. The data in question would need to be fully purged out of the back-end database, and any disk location which contained the data (which should be free space by this time) securely wiped.
    I am looking to put together a process that we can use to test this. Does anybody have a process to wipe out the data in Tikiwiki in such a manner? I would be looking at two specific scenarios:
    1. The data in question is put in a new page, and the page should be removed from the wiki as if it never existed.
    2. The data is put on an existing page, and we want to keep page revisions prior to the data in question being introduced.
    Thanks for any help.

    Reads: 1944
    Posted by Rick Sapir / Tiki for Smarties
    elandrieu wrote:

    1. The data in question is put in a new page, and the page should be removed from the wiki as if it never existed.
    2. The data is put on an existing page, and we want to keep page revisions prior to the data in question being introduced.
    Thanks for any help.


    AFAIK, Tiki supports both these cases...

    When you Remove a page, Tiki deletes the entire page and its history. There are no traces of the page.

    Alternatively, you can remove specific versions of a page (or even restore a page to a prior history).


    HTH,

    - RickQuestion | My Tiki Blog | My Tiki UserPage

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    Need more help? Try Tiki for Dummies SmartiesQuestion: A beginner's guide and Tiki EssentialsQuestion: What all Smarties need to know about Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware.

    Posted by elandrieu
    elandrieu wrote:
    elandrieu wrote:

    1. The data in question is put in a new page, and the page should be removed from the wiki as if it never existed.
    2. The data is put on an existing page, and we want to keep page revisions prior to the data in question being introduced.
    Thanks for any help.


    AFAIK, Tiki supports both these cases...

    When you Remove a page, Tiki deletes the entire page and its history. There are no traces of the page.

    Alternatively, you can remove specific versions of a page (or even restore a page to a prior history).

    It's a little more complicated than that. I did a little poking around and experimenting and got my answer.
    When you delete the page or the revision, the record is deleted from the database, but the information is still in the MySQL database files (in the space where the deleted records had been). Somebody knowing what to search for could search the binary files (or use other tricks) to find it. To remove any trace of the data, we need to do a MySQL OPTIMIZE TABLE on the tiki-pages table, which will get rid of the unused space in the database files. We can then wipe the free space to remove all traces of the particular data.
    I know it sounds a little over-aggresive, but it is required in our organization. Hopefully we never need to use it, but having the knowledge and procedure in-hand will pay for itself if we ever do.
    Thanks.