[12006] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Did you *really* zeroize that key?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Honig)
Thu Nov 7 13:44:04 2002
Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2002 10:13:52 -0800
To: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@research.att.com>,
pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
From: David Honig <dahonig@cox.net>
Cc: cryptography@wasabisystems.com, cypherpunks@lne.com,
ptrei@rsasecurity.com
In-Reply-To: <20021107145526.3EC867B68@berkshire.research.att.com>
At 03:55 PM 11/7/02 +0100, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>Regardless of whether one uses "volatile" or a pragma, the basic point
>remains: cryptographic application writers have to be aware of what a
>clever compiler can do, so that they know to take countermeasures.
Wouldn't a crypto coder be using paranoid-programming
skills, like *checking* that the memory is actually zeroed?
(Ie, read it back..) I suppose that caching could still
deceive you though?
I've read about some Olde Time programmers
who, given flaky hardware (or maybe software),
would do this in non-crypto but very important apps.
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