Hello OpenSSL developers,

I'm trying to ensure that sensitive data (passwords, ...) are not kept in
clear-text in process memory and I have found that all data sent to or
received from OpenSSL is kept in memory...

This is a problem as data sent or received from an SSL connection may
contain sensitive information that we don't want to keep in process memory.

Notes:
- This is only the case when using SSLv3 or TLSv1. When using SSLv2, data is
not kept in memory.
- I am using version 0.9.8k-7ubuntu8.6 from Ubuntu Lucid. If this is related
to a security fix, I think it is up to date.

Reproduction is easy:
- Use 'openssl client -tls1 -connect hostname:443' to connect to an SSL
server
- Send data in TLS connection
- Force generation of core file (kill -SEGV for example)
- Inspect core file, received and sent data will be present

Is there a reason for which OpenSSL may need to keep that data? Is there an
option to alter its behavior?

[
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5746343/why-openssl-may-keep-received-written-data-in-memory]

-- Math

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