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 http://www.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.