PGP swap to disk?

Aidan Skinner aidan@skinner.demon.co.uk
Tue, 14 Sep 1999 20:36:41 -0400 (EDT)



> He says that he's used PGP before, and that it didn't need to be setuid
> root.
I don't understand why GPG needs to be suid, but it might be due to the particular kernel call it's making.
> What attack is being countered by preventing a swap to disk?
If the bit of memory that holds the private key or password is swaped to disk, then it might stay there when Eve (an agent of <insert favourite three letter agency here>) gets your HD and can recover it. This is Bad. - Aidan