On 2005-10-07 04:35:02 +0200, Derek Martin wrote: > Er, well, come on... just because Mutt *can* use an auxiliary > program to handle encryption passphrases securely doesn't mean > mutt itself should completely ignore the issue. As shipped, > mutt is vulnerable.
> Admittedly this is not a severe issue, but it is a legitimate > security concern. I think this really ought to be re-opened. I disagree, unless someone can actually demonstrate (a) a realistic attack model against which mutt is vulnerable, and (b) a defense against this attack model that could be implemented. Hint: Encrypting the pass phrase with a symmetric key that is kept in memory is *not* a solution to an attack that is based on reading the pass phrase from memory, since the attack is now shifted to the equivalently complex reading of the symmetric key from memory. -- Thomas Roessler ยท Personal soap box at <http://log.does-not-exist.org/>.
