NAME

       sswap - secure swap wiper (secure_deletion toolkit)

SYNOPSIS

       sswap [-f] [-l] [-l] [-v] [-z] swapdevice

DESCRIPTION

       sswap  is designed to delete data which may lie still on your swapspace in a secure manner
       which can not be recovered  by  thiefs,  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 http://www.thc.org

       sswap 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), sdmem (1)

                                                                                         SSWAP(1)