node-shred

node-shred is a thin wrapper around the shred shell utility.

Usage

const Shred = require('node-shred');
var shred   = Shred({ files : [ '/tmp/foo', '/tmp/bar' ]});
 
shred
  .on('data', function(data) {
    // Only output from `help` and `version` should appear here. You likely
    // won't need this.
  }
  .on('end', function(success) {
    // `success` will be `true` if shredding was successful, and `false`
    // otherwise.
  })
  .on('error', function(err) {
    // `err` will contain the error message. See the note below regarding
    // `verbose`.
  });

Options

node-shred exposes almost exactly the same options as shred itself:

Parameter	Type	Description
force	Boolean	Change permissions to allow writing if necessary
iterations	Number	Overwrite N times instead of the default (3)
randomSource	String	Get random bytes from FILE
size	String or Number	Shred this many bytes (suffixes like K, M, G, accepted)
remove	Boolean	Truncate and remove files after overwriting
verbose	Boolean	Show progress. (NB: progress information will be written to stderr rather than stdout, and thus must be read from the .on('err') event rather than .on(data). While perhaps counterintuitive, this behavior mirrors that of shred itself.
exact	Boolean	Do not round file sizes up to the next full block; this is the default for non-regular files
zero	Boolean	Add a final overwrite with zeros to hide shredding
files	Array or String	The file or files to shred
file	Array or String	(Alias for files)
help	Boolean	Display shred help and exit
version	Boolean	Output version information and exit
shredPath	String	The path to shred on your system. (Defaults to /usr/bin/shred.)

Notes

• shred must be installed on your system for this wrapper to work.

• Defenses against command-injection attacks have been put in place, except with regards to the shredPath parameter, which cannot be defended. Regardless, it is unwise to allow users to set initialization parameter values.

• The unit-tests only assert that the expected options are being sent to shred. They do not assert that shred behaves as expected. While it is probably reasonable to assume that it does, be aware that this assumption is being made.

• Be certain to read man shred, and to understand the security implications of using shred on modern filesystems.