From: Daiki Ueno <ueno@gnu.org>
To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Wherein I argue for the inclusion of libnettle in Emacs 24.5
Date: Sat, 08 Feb 2014 17:11:41 +0900 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87vbwqm3b6.fsf-ueno@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87y51nb0jk.fsf@lifelogs.com> (Ted Zlatanov's message of "Fri, 07 Feb 2014 06:54:39 -0500")
Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
> design, is hard to use securely as an API. As proof, consider the Java
> libraries to implement OpenPGP internally (BouncyCastle). Similar
> situation in Go (http://godoc.org/code.google.com/p/go.crypto/openpgp).
>
> Is Emacs so different from those platforms, given applications like Gnus
> and Magit and eww?
Isn't it because those platforms provide more advanced memory management
mechanisms than Emacs?
> DU> - On the other hand, Emacs copies small strings around. If passwords
> DU> (normally not too long) are managed poorly in Emacs, they might appear
> DU> repeatedly in a core file, when it crashes.
>
> Right, regardless of EPA/EPG's behavior, you *still* need passwords in
> the clear to open an IMAP connection, for instance.
I didn't mean one-time use of password like that. I was talking about
the risk of keeping passwords in Emacs memory for a long time, as string
copy also happens in GC.
> I feel that, unless we wish to blame the user for not locking their
> desktop, Emacs should at least try to protect such passwords in its
> own "secure core." It's surely possible and, I honestly believe, a
> worthy goal. I think for that goal to happen *some day* we need the
> crypto primitives GnuTLS/libnettle/libhogweed provide, so we don't
> have to write our own.
Elisp access to crypto primitives doesn't help this either. It must be
entirely written in C then, including IMAP protocol support.
By the way, speaking of IMAP, SASL-based authentication is currently
written in Elisp here and there. Perhaps it could be rewritten with
libgsasl? I think this is a concrete use-case, much convincing than
Elisp access to crypto primitives.
--
Daiki Ueno
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2014-02-08 8:11 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 44+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2014-02-03 22:36 Wherein I argue for the inclusion of libnettle in Emacs 24.5 Lars Ingebrigtsen
2014-02-04 3:21 ` Stefan Monnier
2014-02-04 13:07 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-04 14:44 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2014-02-04 18:36 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-04 22:44 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
2014-02-05 2:28 ` Stefan Monnier
2014-02-05 2:39 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
2014-02-05 7:00 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-05 8:13 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2014-02-05 13:41 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-05 15:50 ` andres.ramirez
2014-02-05 17:00 ` chad
2014-02-05 18:55 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-06 5:03 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2014-02-06 11:49 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-06 13:03 ` Stefan Monnier
2014-02-06 14:28 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-06 15:05 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2014-02-06 15:54 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-07 2:06 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2014-02-07 6:51 ` David Kastrup
2014-02-07 7:15 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2014-02-07 8:53 ` David Kastrup
2014-02-07 10:00 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2014-02-07 10:49 ` David Kastrup
2014-02-07 20:43 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2014-02-07 21:42 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-07 22:23 ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2014-02-07 15:30 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-07 9:07 ` Daiki Ueno
2014-02-07 11:54 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-08 8:11 ` Daiki Ueno [this message]
2014-02-08 16:59 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-05 8:19 ` Daiki Ueno
2014-02-04 13:10 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-04 16:27 ` Paul Eggert
2014-02-04 18:32 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-04 19:04 ` Paul Eggert
2014-02-04 20:11 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-04 21:46 ` Paul Eggert
2014-02-04 22:44 ` Ted Zlatanov
2014-02-04 22:36 ` Lars Ingebrigtsen
2014-02-05 5:11 ` Daiki Ueno
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