Re: Security of data in memory

From: Matthew Cline (mattat_private)
Date: Wed Jan 16 2002 - 15:44:34 PST

  • Next message: Pavol Luptak: "Re: Security of data in memory" 

    > On Tue, 2001-12-25 at 13:31, Nicholas Brawn wrote:
> > I have a unix program that reads in an encrypted file, decrypts it and
> > works on it whilst in memory. What security considerations should I be
> > aware of? I'm thinking of things like clearing the decrypted buffer
> > prior to exiting, not storing any of the data in a temporary file, etc.

On UNIX GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org) can, if installed SUID root, locks 
memory pages to prevent them from being swapped out to disk.

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