seeddestroyed

Seeddestroyed is a term used in discussions of cryptography, random number generation, and entropy management to describe the deliberate destruction of seed material after it has served its immediate purpose. In many systems, a seed determines the output sequence of a pseudorandom number generator, and destroying the seed afterward is argued to reduce the risk that future memory access or backups could reveal the original state.

The term is not a formal standard and does not refer to a universally defined procedure. It often appears in security guidelines and best-practice discussions as a descriptive concept tied to entropy hygiene, forward secrecy, or state destruction. Because the specifics of seed handling vary by implementation, seeddestroyed may be described differently across projects, languages, and hardware environments.

Contexts where seeddestroyed is discussed include software RNGs, hardware RNGs, and entropy pools. After seeding, teams may emphasize erasing seed material from volatile memory, purging it from persistent storage, and avoiding leakage through logs, swap space, or caches. The goal is to ensure that no recoverable copy remains that could recreate the initial state, while recognizing that complete destruction can impact reproducibility and auditing in some systems.

Trade-offs and considerations include balancing determinism and reproducibility against security, as well as ensuring that destruction processes themselves do not introduce new risks. Seeddestroyed remains a descriptive term rather than a standardized practice, used to articulate a principle of careful seed handling in secure design.

See also: seed, pseudorandom number generator, entropy, zeroization.