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SFILL(1)		     General Commands Manual			SFILL(1)

NAME
     sfill - secure free disk and inode space wiper (secure_deletion toolkit)

SYNOPSIS
     sfill [-f] [-i] [-I] [-l] [-l] [-v] [-z] directory/mountpoint

DESCRIPTION
     sfill is designed to delete data which lies on available diskspace on medi-
     ums  in  a secure manner which can not be recovered by thiefs, law enforce-
     ment 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 sfill 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.

     afterwards as many temporary files as possible are generated  to  wipe  the
     free  inode  space.  After no more temporary files can be created, they are
     removed and sfill is finnished.

COMMANDLINE OPTIONS
     -f     fast (and insecure mode): no /dev/urandom, no synchronize mode.

     -i     wipe only free inode space, not free disk space

     -I     wipe only free disk space, not free inode space

     -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 random
	    pass is written.

     -v     verbose mode

     -z     wipes the last write with zeros instead of random data

     directory/mountpoint  this  is  the  location  of	the file created in your
     filesystem. It should lie on the partition you want to write.

LIMITATIONS
     FILESYSTEM INTELLIGENCE
	    Most filesystems (ext2, ffs, etc.) have several features included to
	    enhance performance, which will result in that sfill might	not  re-
	    ceive  all	available  free space. Sad but true. Nothing can be done
	    about that ...

     NFS    Beware of NFS. You can't ensure you  really  completely  wiped  your
	    data from the remote disks. (especially because of caching)

     Raid   Raid Systems use stripped disks and have got large caches. It's hard
	    to wipe them.

     swap   Some  of  your  data  might have a copy in your swapspace.	sswap is
	    available for this task.

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

     sfill  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 un-
     der 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 FIT-
     NESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for  more
     details.

SEE ALSO
     srm (1), sswap (1), smem (1)

									SFILL(1)

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