While the actual key may have had a very small exposure, has there been any data left that can be used to obtain the key? Specifically the users passphrase. It was probably cleaned by the crypto code.
But the real question concerns all of the support or common code. Does the GUI component that collects the users passphrase input clear or clean any temporary storage it uses? Does it have a working buffer that it keeps? Do any library functions create malloced buffers that are freed without cleaning? Where (and in what form) is the key for the "unwrapping" of the keys kept? More parts of the system need to be vigilant than just the core crypto code!! Victor Probo Wan-Teh Chang wrote: > Tom wrote: > >> >> My question is how Netscape 6.2.* handles this kind of stuff. At first >> sight >> Netscape 6.2.1 passes the test: I have imported a self generated client >> certificate into Netscape 6.2.1 and use it to visit my test-webserver >> which >> requires both server and client authentication. After that, my >> PhysicalMemoryScanner doesn't seem to find the private key. So I would >> like >> to ask you all if special care was taken to avoid that the private key >> shows >> up plain-text in memory ? > > > > Yes. NSS (the crypto libraries used in Netscape 6.2.*) keeps its > private keys "wrapped" (encrypted) until actually needed. > > Wan-Teh > > >
