phc-discussions - Re: [PHC] further limitation: not writing secret to memory

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Message-ID: <CAHOTMV+Mvvi0Ej592-j65SDdyMazYaC_7FOgye+ZZfven6CE-Q@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 18:10:58 -0500
From: Tony Arcieri <bascule@...il.com>
To: "discussions@...sword-hashing.net" <discussions@...sword-hashing.net>
Subject: Re: [PHC] further limitation: not writing secret to memory

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Larry Bugbee <bugbee@....com> wrote:
>
> But while that or something else might lock on Linux, there might be no
> way to reliably lock on other platforms.  If that be the case, the
> algorithm is not really appropriate if one might need to re-host on a
> different platform later.
>

mlock is part of SUSv2:

http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/xsh/mlock.html

Windows is the real problem here. It supports a proprietary API called
VirtualLock to accomplish the same thing:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366895(v=vs.85).aspx


On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 4:27 PM, Krisztián Pintér <pinterkr@...il.com>wrote:

> it also does not help on a virtual server
>

Well, on a virtual server you have no secrets from the hypervisor, and
other things to worry about like cross-VM sidechannels:

http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/10/attack-of-week-cross-vm-timing-attacks.html

-- 
Tony Arcieri

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