On Thu October 1 2009, Michael D. Adams wrote: > On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 4:24 PM, Ger Hobbelt <[email protected]> wrote: > > A note about your mention of 'security leak': when you are worried > > about adversaries who can run 'ps -l' on your machine, then you're > > essentially worried about adversaries with plenty of access to your > > machine, so they'll quite probably be able to 'cat' that keyfile > > Any normal user on a Linux machine would be able to see 'ps -f'. But > to 'cat' the keyfile or coredump the app, they would need to either > (1) have root access, or (2) have cracked the machine. In my mind > there is a large leap between 'normal users could get this secret > info' and 'user's with root access could get this secret info'. >
Misplaced security barrier - The user should be sufficiently security qualified to see what they type. Everbody in the same room should be sufficiently security qualified to see anything typed within that room. The room should be sufficiently security qualified to exclude others. In some installations, the red lights on the walls and ceilings flash and the screens are all blanked if someone with less than a certain minimum security qualification level is allowed entry. And if that unqualified person unblanks a screen and types ps -f : simple, shoot them. (I was one of the guys that carried the gun in the room for years.) Other than those operational procedures, you should at least write your own application that does not disclose what you want hidden. Mike > Michael D. Adams > ______________________________________________________________________ > OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org > User Support Mailing List [email protected] > Automated List Manager [email protected] > > ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org User Support Mailing List [email protected] Automated List Manager [email protected]
