Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.

DashShredder Widget Information

Introduction
This widget will completely erase files and folders beyond any recovery in compliance with the US Department of Defense specifications for removing sensitive data from a storage device.

Warning!
When a file is removed with the shredder, you can never recover it! (That's the whole POINT!) Please be careful!

Usage
To use the DashShredder, simply drag a file or folder in Finder. While you are dragging, you can open your Dashboard (The F12 key is the default way to do that. That key can be changed in your System Preferences->Dashboard & Expose). Then simply drop the file onto the Shredder.

You will notice that the shredder shows a document loaded at that point. To shred the file, you then click on the red "Power" button. You will see the shreds appear inside the bin of the shredder, and you will be given a message of success.

If you don't click the Power Button, or hit the "Cancel" button, your file will not be erased.

How it works
For you geeks who want to know how it works, this is simply using the built-in srm (secure remove) function of Mac OSX. (Open a terminal window and type 'man srm' to learn more about this function).

The Shredder does the equivalent of typing 'srm -Rmz <file/folder>' in the terminal.

The passed options are:
-R recursive, so it will delete all of the contents of a folder dragged onto it.
-m medium security, which does 7 US DoD compliant writes over each block(0xF6, 0x00, 0xFF, random, 0x00, 0xFF, random)
-z zero the blocks. Writes zeros over every block after the 7 overwrites

Known issues and bugs

only one file or folder can be dragged onto it at one time. If multiple files are dragged, it will only shred one of them. If you need to shred multiple files at once, place them all inside a folder and drag the folder onto the shredder.
If you don't have permissions to erase a file, the shredder will still report a successful shred (but won't erase the file, which is probably a good thing)

Disclaimer
Use this software at your own risk. I am not responsible for anything that might go wrong when using the DashShredder.

Contact
I wrote this simply for my own use, and don't plan on actively supporting it. But if you have questions or comments, feel free to contact me via email

Enjoy!