Irretrievably destroying data in Java

Question

Is there anyway in Java to delete data (e.g., a variable value, object) and be sure it can\'t be recovered from memory? Does assigning null to a variable in Jav

Answer 1

Nope, unless you have direct answer to hardware. There is a chance that variable will be cached somewhere. Sensitive data can even be stored in swap :) If you're concerning only about RAM, you can play with garbage collector. In high level langs usually you don't have a direct access to memory, so it's not possible to control this aspect. For example in .NET there is a class SecureString which uses interop and direct memory access.