From: Paul Koning               1695 <pkoning@chipcom.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 1995 22:55:15 +0800
To: Cypherpunks mailing list <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: Re: Linux security issues
Message-ID: <30911745@mailer2>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>Actually keeping the pass phrase out of swap space is fairly easy (although
>I havn't looked at the PGP code to see if it actually does this).
>...
>However, the pass phrase is not the only dangerous information.
>...
>N.B. This problem affects all virtual memory operation systems.

Not all of them.  In at least one (VMS) you can pin pages in physical 
memory,
i.e., prevent them from being written to disk.  Actually, any OS that does 
I/O
directly to user pages has that capability in the kernel; in the case of VMS
(and possibly others, I don't know) it also exists as a system service that
applications can invoke.

This solves the problem: you can pin a suitable number of pages, and put
your sensitive data buffers there.

     paul