sdmem - secure memory wiper (secure_deletion toolkit)

       van Hauser / THC <vh@thc.org>

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

       BETA!sdmem is still beta.

       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 :)

-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

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 securedatadeletion 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.

       The newest version of the secure_deletionpackage can be obtained from http://www.thc.orgsdmem and the secure_deletionpackage 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.

       sdmem - secure memory wiper (secure_deletion toolkit)

       This utility was originally called
              smem but was renamed for debian to avoid name clashes with another package.

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

                                                                                                        SDMEM(1)

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