sswap (1)
Leading comments
This definition swiped from the gcc(1) man page
NAME
sswap - secure swap wiper (secure_deletion toolkit)SYNOPSIS
sswap [-f] [-l] [-l] [-v] [-z] swapdeviceDESCRIPTION
sswap is designed to delete data which may lie still on your swapspace 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 sswap 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.
COMMANDLINE OPTIONS
- -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 with random values.
- -l
- -l for a second time lessons the security even more: only one pass with random values is written.
- -v
- verbose mode
- -z
- wipes the last write with zeros instead of random data
BEWARE
- swapoff
- unmount your swapspace before using this tool! Otherwise your system might crash!
- BETA!
-
sswap
is still beta. It was only tested on Linux but on this system it performed
it's work all of the time.
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.orgsswap 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.