Reference:
To appear in the 2004 SIGOPS European Workshop.
Abstract:
As sensitive data lifetime (i.e. propagation and duration in memory)
increases, so does the risk of exposure. Unfortunately, this issue
has been largely overlooked in the design of most of today's
operating systems, libraries, languages, etc. As a result,
applications are likely to leave the sensitive data they handle
(passwords, financial and military information, etc.) scattered
widely over memory, leaked to disk, etc. and left there for an
indeterminate period of time. This greatly increases the impact of a
system compromise.
Dealing with data lifetime issues is currently left to application
developers, who largely overlook them. Security-aware developers
who attempt to address them (e.g. cryptographic library writers)
are stymied by the limitations of the operating systems, languages,
etc. they rely on. We argue that data lifetime is a systems issue
which must be recognized and addressed at all layers of the software
stack.
Full paper: [ps] [pdf] [Bibtex Entry]