Other Help Topics :: Swap-File / Swap-Partition and security ?

Thanks very much!

So the best solution is probably to clean the current existing swap-partitions with the following two commands:
> dd /dev/zero /dev/hda4
> mkswap /dev/hda4
("hda4" only as example, to be named according to the real used swap-partition)

And boot with the boot option "noswap", in case high sensitive data will be used in the session.

Quote

So the best solution is probably to clean the current existing swap-partitions with the following two commands:
> dd /dev/zero /dev/hda4
> mkswap /dev/hda4
("hda4" only as example, to be named according to the real used swap-partition)

I suppose that works, but I seem to remember a program in windows that would clean files off a (standard) hard drive permanently - but it suggested that 7 overwrites should be safe enough. Don't know how paranoid that really is, but that would be running the dd command 7 more times!

Linux based disk wiper: http://dban.sourceforge.net/
You can also use "badblocks -svw /dev/disktowipe" from DSL to overwrite the disk four times.
I would guess that overwriting once is good enough.

original here.