GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 152001
add a "really secure" mode to GtkEntry
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
GtkEntry supports a "secure" mode via gtk_entry_set_visibility() in which the input typed by the user is hidden. However, this mode is not appropriate for entering highly sensitive data like a GnuPG key passphrase as the data might still be leaked to swap space. I therefore suggest adding a "high security mode" in which all data containing the input (e.g. passphrase) is stored in unpageable memory (the application must of course be suid root for that). I already suggested to add the necessary memory allocation methods to glib [1]. An example for an application needing this "high security mode" is pinentry (part of the Aegypten project). I hacked a really (hopefully...) secure GtkEntry widget for it, using the pinentry methods for memory allocation [2], but I think it might be useful for others, too. [1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=151999 [2] http://cvs.gnupg.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/pinentry/gtk%2B-2/?cvsroot=Project+Aegypten
Not quite the oldest open GTK+ bug, but close. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 3355 ***