hacked by the (alleged) `amazon-security' scammers

[Liam Proven]

On Fri, 26 Nov 2021 at 12:26, Ian Bruntlett <ian.bruntlett at gmail.com> wrote:

> I might be being too cautious here, but if you are dealing with a drive with an uncertain past, shouldn't you ensure the MBR gets wiped as well? I tend to use dban to wipe such drives with dban before installing Ubuntu on them. When I install Ubuntu on such a drive, I always choose the "Wipe hard drive and install Ubuntu" option (apologies - trying to remember the precise wording of that option and failing.
>
> I suppose, whenever you run sudo update-grub it overwrites the code in the MBR anyway - my approach might be redundant?
>
> Does that make sense?

DBAN, sadly, is commercial now. I posted an alternative to it earlier
in this thread, but I did not want to repeat myself. I was just trying
to reassure the OP that it wasn't necessary to destroy working
hardware.

No need to do a full disk wipe. Just pick "Try Ubuntu" (or Lubuntu or
whatever) on the live medium, run GParted, open the "Device" menu and
pick  "new partition table". Presto, fresh shiny new MBR and the old
one is totally gone.

Then continue with the normal install procedure.

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