PG-2512: Secure-erase sensitive data#39
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Since the library deals with (private) keys and other possible secure data, we should make sure that everything we do uses a secure erase allocator. This is an API-breaking change since we have to modify the interface to use proper allocators.
jeltz
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Jul 14, 2026
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Not a full review, jsut took a quick look. One of the trickiest parts with reviewing this is making sure we have covered everything which may affect the public interfaces.
| ::memset_s(p, n, 0, n); | ||
| #elif defined(__GLIBC__) && \ | ||
| (__GLIBC__ > 2 || (__GLIBC__ == 2 && __GLIBC_MINOR__ >= 25)) | ||
| // glibc >= 2.25 and the BSDs provide explicit_bzero. |
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Comment is a bit funny as is is gated behind glibc only.
| } | ||
| // Compiler barrier so the writes are not reordered/coalesced away. | ||
| __asm__ __volatile__("" : : "r"(p) : "memory"); | ||
| #endif |
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Do we really need the fallback? glibc 2.25 was released in 2017. Does our C++ even compile on such ancient platforms?
| * dead-store elimination target: the optimizer sees the memory is never read | ||
| * again and removes the write, leaving secrets in place. secure_clear routes | ||
| * through a platform "explicit" zeroing primitive when available and falls | ||
| * back to a volatile write loop otherwise, so the store always happens. |
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I feel this comment is a bit unnecessary and can be shortened.
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Since the library deals with (private) keys and other possible secure data, we should make sure that everything we do uses a secure erase allocator.
This is an API-breaking change since we have to modify the interface to use proper allocators.