Implications of using insecure memory

[shatadal at vfemail.net]

Quoting Atom 'Smasher' <atom at suspicious.org>:

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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

<snip>

I use windows. Does that mean that I should not use gpg on windows? Or should I
install some utility to wipe the disc swap space and use it every time after I
have used gpg? Could you point me to any program which does this?


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