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U.S. DOD 5220.22 wipe utility

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Yrrk

IS-IT--Management
Aug 22, 2004
180
US
Anyone know if CentOS43/RHE include a U.S. DOD 5220.22 complient wipe utility?

If not, has anyone found one they're happy with?

Thanks!
 
bcwipe claims DOD 5220.22 compliance, but if I remember the standard correctly, shred should work as well. I believe that the standard simply requires a Gutman 7 time overwrite.

Word to the wise though, journaling file systems like ext3 and ReiserFS often leave some portions of the file on the disk because they are no longer part of the active file. And there is the whole swap disk and /tmp directory issues depending on the application and system utilization.

But if you are wiping an entire filesystem or physical disk, these apps work great.

Also, don't try to do file by file wipes on flash media. It may appear to work, but if you dump the entire media you will probably find fragments or whole files left behind. There is no physical memory location addressing on flash media because the media has a finite write cycle life.


pansophic
 
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