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

       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)

                                                                                                        SDMEM(1)