sdmem (1)

Leading comments

This definition swiped from the gcc(1) man page

(The comments found at the beginning of the groff file "man1/sdmem.1".)

NAME

sdmem - secure memory wiper (secure_deletion toolkit)

SYNOPSIS

sdmem [-f] [-l] [-l] [-v]

DESCRIPTION

sdmem is designed to delete data which may lie still in your memory (RAM) in a secure manner which can not be recovered by thieves, law enforcement or other threats. Note that with the new SDRAMs, data will not wither away but will be kept static - it is easy to extract the necessary information! The wipe algorithm is based on the paper "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory" presented at the 6th Usenix Security Symposium by Peter Gutmann, one of the leading civilian cryptographers.

The secure data deletion process of sdmem goes like this:

*

1 pass with 0x00

*

5 random passes. /dev/urandom is used for a secure RNG if available.

*

27 passes with special values defined by Peter Gutmann.

*

5 random passes. /dev/urandom is used for a secure RNG if available.

COMMANDLINE OPTIONS

-f

fast (and insecure mode): no /dev/urandom.

-l

lessens the security. Only two passes are written: the first with 0x00 and a final random one.

-l

-l for a second time lessons the security even more: only one pass with 0x00 is written.

-v

verbose mode

NOTE

This utility was originally called

smem but was renamed for debian to avoid name clashes with another package.

BEWARE

SLOW

Wiping the memory is very slow. You might use sdmem with the -ll option. (tip)

BETA!

sdmem is still beta.

BUGS

No bugs. There was never a bug in the secure_deletion package (in contrast to my other tools, whew, good luck ;-) Send me any that you find. Patches are nice too :)

AUTHOR

van Hauser / THC <vh@thc.org>

DISTRIBUTION

The newest version of the secure_deletion package can be obtained from www.thc.org

sdmem and the secure_deletion package is (C) 1997-2003 by van Hauser / THC (vh@thc.org)

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; Version 2.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

SEE ALSO

srm (1), sfill (1), sswap (1)