Implications of using insecure memory

[Atom 'Smasher']

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On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 shatadal at vfemail.net wrote:

> As a new user I want to know what are the implications of using gpg with 
> insecure memory in windows and linux, how serious are they and what 
> steps can I take to improve security? Does insecure memory mean that I 
> should not use gpg on sych systems?
=================

it means that sensitive information, such as a passphrase or secret key 
*might* be written to a disk swap space. if that happens, and someone 
stole your HD, they could search the disk and maybe find something that 
could compromise your key.

i dunno about windoze, but on *nix you can solve this by setuid-ing the 
gpg binary... that would force it to only use secure memory (RAM) and not 
write to disk swap.


  	...atom

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