secure-delete

Secure file deletion utility, written in C.

Repository

The deletion process is as follows:

1. Overwrite the file with multiple passes. After each pass, the disk cache is flushed. The number of passes depends on the commanded mode:

• (default / secure mode) 38 passes:
  • 1x overwrite with 0xff.
  • 5x random passes.
  • 27x overwrites with special values to make the recovery from MFM- and RLL-encoded hard disks hard to impossible.
  • 5x random passes.
• (insecure mode) 2 passes:
  • 1x overwrite with 0xff.
  • 1x random pass.
• (totally insecure mode) 1 pass:
  • 1x random pass.

2. Truncate the file, so that an observer wouldn't know which diskblocks belonged to the file.
3. Rename the file.
4. Delete (unlink) the file.

In 1 second you can approximately overwrite 1 to 2 MB of data (on a hard disk).

In "totally insecure" mode, in 15 seconds you can approximately overwrite 100 MB of data. The same deletion takes about 60 minutes in totally secure mode.

Usage

secure-delete [-dflrvz] file1 file2 etc.

Options:
        -d  ignore the two dot special files "." and "..".
        -f  fast (and insecure mode): no /dev/urandom, no synchronize mode.
        -l  lessens the security (use twice for total insecure mode).
        -r  recursive mode, deletes all subdirectories.
        -v  is verbose mode.
        -z  last wipe writes zeros instead of random data.

Does a secure overwrite/rename/delete of the target file(s).
Default is secure mode (38 writes).