program to inject corruption into files
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README.md

Irradiate v0.2

Evelene Ultraviolet

July 2019

AGPL v3


Oh no, what is it this time?

Irradiate is a program for messing up your files. It does so in a manner reminiscent of how high-energy charged particle damage to the data storage medium might manifest - flipped bits inserted in a random fashion.


What it does

When called on a file, Irradiate opens the file in read-write mode, seeks to a selectable number of random positions on the file, and sets single bits to certain values. You can tell it to either set the bits to a randomly-selected state (the default), or to only zero them (using --zero), only one them (using --one), or flip them (using --flip). If you please, you can also give a "holdoff" value to protect a certain number of bytes at the beginning of the file, e.g. to prevent a header from being corrupted and rendering a file unopenable, using the --holdoff flag.

Be warned! This program will corrupt any file you point it at. It does not copy the input file like a normal converter program does; it operates in-place. If you want to preserve the original file, you need to copy it to a new location before you run Irradiate on it.


Why would you want to do this?

As is typical of our projects, you likely would not. However, we think it might be useful for glitch art.


Why does it only operate on files in-place?

The decision to do this was made the way it was due to the fact that real high-energy radiation does not helpfully make copies of your files before it messes with them - it, like this program, simply damages them where they lie. It's more immersive this way.

For maximum immersion, you can run Irradiate on a block device, like a USB flash drive or SD card. This probably requires running it as root, which is a bad idea and you shouldn't do it, but it's an option if you feel like disregarding this advice.

Irradiate does not offer the option to operate recursively on directories, for reasons which are hopefully not too difficult to imagine.


Can this program actually damage my computer, or hurt me, the way real ionizing radiation could?

This program does not produce ionizing radiation. It may seem like it goes without saying, but we will clarify it anyway. irradiate cannot directly cause harm to your body.

As for your computer, well... We do not recommend you run this as root, especially against targets like:

  • Your kernel
  • Your initramfs
  • Your computer's EFI firmware
  • Important block devices, such as your system's boot medium
  • /dev/mem

Treat this program like you would rm or shred. The files it acts on should be considered lost, and any resemblance they bear to the originals considered as a happy accident.

All this being said: if you ever do run Irradiate on some important system of device file and something funny or cool happens... let us know, yeah?


Changelog

2019 July 1: Initial commit in working form
2019 July 7: Added timing stats