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From: Peter Jones <mlists@pmade.com>
To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org
Subject: org-crypt.el security problem (From: Milan Zamazal)
Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2011 08:06:40 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <m27hce7wn3.fsf@pmade.com> (raw)

Here is an email I received from Milan Zamazal:

,----
| I don't know whether you are aware of this, but I consider it a serious
| security problem of org-crypt.el in (at least) Emacs 23.2:
| 
| I've found out that when I edit a (decrypted) crypt entry and the edited
| file is autosaved, the autosaved file contains the given crypt entry in
| plain text.  So unless the user has got a special arrangement of storing
| autosave files to a secure location where they are also deleted
| securely, the secret content may be accessed either in the autosave file
| directly, or it may be later retrieved by an off-line attacker from the
| deleted file content that remained stored somewhere on the disk.
| 
| This should be fixed or at least a big warning should be placed in
| org-crypt.el.
`----

I don't have time to look into this.  Would someone please see if there
is a way to prevent it.  Off the top of my head, the only thing I can
think of is disabling autosave for any org buffer that uses org-crypt.

Hopefully there's an autosave hook where you can encrypt the headings
and save to disk using a temporary buffer without having to alter the
current buffer and interrupt the user by encrypting a heading that is
being edited.

-- 
Peter Jones - pmade inc.
303-219-0226 http://pmade.com

next             reply	other threads:[~2011-03-04 15:06 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2011-03-04 15:06 Peter Jones [this message]
2011-03-04 15:39 ` org-crypt.el security problem (From: Milan Zamazal) Julien Danjou
2011-03-06 10:01   ` Bastien
2011-03-06 10:47     ` Julien Danjou
2011-03-06 17:54       ` Bastien
2011-03-07 11:08         ` Julien Danjou
2011-03-06  9:59 ` Bastien

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