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| author | Paul Kehrer <paul.l.kehrer@gmail.com> | 2014-03-25 07:05:37 -0430 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Paul Kehrer <paul.l.kehrer@gmail.com> | 2014-03-25 07:05:37 -0430 |
| commit | 0201c3569b00ca3ef664d2ba67b527c14e0cdfff (patch) | |
| tree | b423d7a28c96c41403324a3ec7d0d06453991eda | |
| parent | fabf28a20ebe230344b65fc8c4ff615d466b8828 (diff) | |
| parent | a108ac6ce647112bd941657b5c7fe6a2c8ae3c36 (diff) | |
| download | cryptography-0201c3569b00ca3ef664d2ba67b527c14e0cdfff.tar.gz cryptography-0201c3569b00ca3ef664d2ba67b527c14e0cdfff.tar.bz2 cryptography-0201c3569b00ca3ef664d2ba67b527c14e0cdfff.zip | |
Merge pull request #845 from public/no-memory-wipe-docs
Document our security limitations
| -rw-r--r-- | docs/index.rst | 1 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | docs/limitations.rst | 19 |
2 files changed, 20 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/index.rst b/docs/index.rst index a25f4470..58424bfc 100644 --- a/docs/index.rst +++ b/docs/index.rst @@ -85,6 +85,7 @@ The ``cryptography`` open source project installation development/index security + limitations api-stability doing-a-release changelog diff --git a/docs/limitations.rst b/docs/limitations.rst new file mode 100644 index 00000000..5b63ef54 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/limitations.rst @@ -0,0 +1,19 @@ +Known security limitations +-------------------------- + +Lack of secure memory wiping +============================ + +`Memory wiping`_ is used to protect secret data or key material from attackers +with access to uninitialized memory. This can be either because the attacker +has some kind of local user access or because of how other software uses +uninitialized memory. + +Python exposes no API for us to implement this reliably and as such almost all +software in Python is potentially vulnerable to this attack. However the +`CERT secure coding guidelines`_ consider this issue as "low severity, +unlikely, expensive to repair" and we do not consider this a high risk for most +users. + +.. _`Memory wiping`: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2013/05/29/10421912.aspx +.. _`CERT secure coding guidelines`: https://www.securecoding.cert.org/confluence/display/seccode/MEM03-C.+Clear+sensitive+information+stored+in+reusable+resources |