Re: Can I do secure memory management in Perl scripts for cryptographic applications?

I think that if you are really that paranoid about the content of the data you decoded (and you may have very well good reasons for it) then you should program this in the lowest level code possible (assembler anyone?) and even forego the use of all OS-calls since you can never be sure if and where they get intercepted, sidetracked or otherwise (ab)used in a way contrary to your security needs.

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

Comment on Re: Can I do secure memory management in Perl scripts for cryptographic applications?

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Re^2: Can I do secure memory management in Perl scripts for cryptographic applications? by radiantmatrix (Parson) on Jan 23, 2007 at 05:18 UTC
Well, I'm not that paranoid. I understand (as will my customers) that while the text is displayed, any rouge app/etc. that might be on the machine could access it -- if nothing else, by capturing the screen buffer. All I'm really looking for in terms of safety is that when the cleartext display is destroyed, being reasonably certain that it's not still lurking about in some easy-to-retrieve place. I'm willing to live with it remaining in swap (encrypting swap is so damned easy these days...), but would not want it hanging about in RAM. <–radiant.matrix–> Ramblings and references The Code that can be seen is not the true Code I haven't found a problem yet that can't be solved by a well-placed trebuchet	[reply]
Re^3: Can I do secure memory management in Perl scripts for cryptographic applications? by shmem (Chancellor) on Jan 23, 2007 at 06:34 UTC
(encrypting swap is so damned easy these days...) and then you have that encryption key somewhere in RAM... --shmem _($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo. G°\ / /\_¯/(q / ---------------------------- \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."· ");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}	[reply]
Re^4: Can I do secure memory management in Perl scripts for cryptographic applications? by radiantmatrix (Parson) on Jan 23, 2007 at 15:22 UTC
Yeah, it's enough to make you scream, isn't it? :-) At least the key for encrypted swap is somewhat protected (you pretty much have to be root to get at it, assuming there aren't gaping bugs in the swap or encryption layer). There's a point at which paranoia has just got to stop, and one needs to say "secure enough", I guess. <–radiant.matrix–> Ramblings and references The Code that can be seen is not the true Code I haven't found a problem yet that can't be solved by a well-placed trebuchet	[reply]