Can’t I just clear the swapfile before shutting down Microsoft Windows?
Yes, you can. In fact, you can make MS Windows do it automatically, using a registry setting. This approach has some shortcomings, however, that render it significantly less “safe” than simply never writing sensitive decrypted data to the swapfile itself (in addition to degrading system performance): • Data on the hard drive is usually easier to access when you’re not supposed to do so than data in RAM. This means that if someone has compromised system security, but doesn’t have some tool in place to log keystrokes and otherwise intercept decrypted data you’re using, it can be quicker and easier to get at sensitive data in the swapfile before MS Windows deletes it than in RAM. • MS Windows cannot overwrite an “active page” in a swapfile. That means that it only overwrites the data when you’re done with the application that created the memory that was written to the swapfile in the first place. That assumes both that there isn’t a memory leak that lets the data in the swapfile stay wher
