srm (1)
Leading comments
This definition swiped from the gcc(1) man page
NAME
srm - secure remove (secure_deletion toolkit)SYNOPSIS
srm [-d] [-f] [-l] [-l] [-r] [-v] [-z] filesDESCRIPTION
srm is designed to delete data on mediums in a secure manner which can not be recovered by thieves, law enforcement or other threats. The wipe algorythm 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 srm goes like this:
- *
- 1 pass with 0xff
- *
- 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.
- *
- Rename the file to a random value
- *
- Truncate the file
As an additional measure of security, the file is opened in O_SYNC mode and after each pass an fsync() call is done. srm writes 32k blocks for the purpose of speed, filling buffers of disk caches to force them to flush and overwriting old data which belonged to the file.
COMMANDLINE OPTIONS
- -d
- ignore the two special dot files . and .. on the commandline. (so you can execute it like "srm -d .* *")
- -f
- fast (and insecure mode): no /dev/urandom, no synchronize mode.
- -l
- lessens the security. Only two passes are written: one mode with 0xff and a final mode random values.
- -l
- -l for a second time lessons the security even more: only one random pass is written.
- -r
- recursive mode, deletes all subdirectories.
- -v
- verbose mode
- -z
- wipes the last write with zeros instead of random data
LIMITATIONS
- NFS
- Beware of NFS. You can't ensure you really completely wiped your data from the remote disks.
- Raid
- Raid Systems use stripped disks and have got large caches. It's hard to wipe them.
- swap, /tmp, etc.
-
Some of your data might have a temporary (deleted) copy somewhere on the
disk. You should use
sfill
which comes with the
secure_deletion package
to ensure to wipe also the free diskspace. However, If already a small
file acquired a block with your precious data, no tool known to me can help
you here. For a secure deletion of the swap space
sswap
is available.
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.orgsrm 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.