IPython: How to wipe IPython's history selectively & securely?

Question

I have been learning how to use the paramiko package only to discover that all I stored passwords in plain text in IPython's %hist. Not so good.

I therefore need to get rid of particular parts of what is stored in %hist. Saying that, I do not want to wipe the whole history. - Only the parts where I have been careless enough to type password = or similar chosen terms.

Thanks

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Comments I don't need:

• %clear only clears the session. It does not wipe the history.
• Yes. I will only use xSA_keys from now on.

Answer 1

History is store on $(ipython locate)/profile_default/history.sqlite by default. You can remove the file, and or do any operation you want on it (secure erase, etc..). It's an sqlite file so you can load it with any sqlite program and do query on it.

Check in $(ipython locate)/profile_default/ and other $(ipython locate)/profile_xxx that you do not have any other history files. $(ipython locate) is usually ~/.ipython/ but can vary:

ls $(ipython locate)/profile_*/*.sqlite 

Answer 2

One solution would be:

sqlite ~/.ipython/profile_default/history.sqlite  delete from history where source like '%password =%';