Re: [Twisted-Python] Erasing strings from memory?

On Sun, 10 Nov 2002, "Paul Swartz" <z3p@twistedmatrix.com> wrote:

I'm working on a SSH client/server for Twisted, and some of the things the client needs to work with are passwords both for login and for private keys, and then the decrypted keys. Obviously, storing these in memory leads to the possibility of acessing them and thereby compromising the user. Is there a way to overwrite the data, or otherwise erase it from memory?

The best way would probably to do it in a subprocess. The next best way would be to read the string into an mmapped are which you explicitely free. If you want to be really secure, write a third program like ssh-agent which does the authentication for a user.