Re: Credentials held unencrypted in memory during runtime

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 10:54 AM, Stefan Küng <tortoisesvn_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 16:50, Ron Wilson <ronw.mrmx_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>> If this is truly the case, then SVN is not implemted correctly.
>> However, that would be for a different mail list.
>
> So, how should it be implemented?

I will assume the algorithm used is strong. Therefore the main sources
of weakness would be a fixed key, poor key generation, poor handling
of the key or mistakes in implementation.

The last 2 can mitigated by design and code reviews, preferably by
outside experts. Every bit of security code my coworkers and I write
is reviewed by experts whose billing rates far exceed my pay+benefits.

Key generation techniques depend on the soures of entropy available.
While the software I help develop is targetted to vastly different
platforms than a PC, I can say that potential sources of entropy on a
PC would include key press timing variations, disk access timing
variations and network statistics. The outputs of several sources of
entropy can be combined using a hash function like SHA.

But, as I said, this is really a discussion for a different mail list.

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Received on 2011-04-12 17:41:35 CEST