Hi Skyler, > Sorry for jumping in at the last minute, but to encrypt > something in RAM, wouldn't you need an external hardware
No, you can work as if you were swapping: The 386 and newer CPU allow you to flag memory areas as "not accessible" and trigger a call which allows you to make the area useable on demand, for example by swapping it back in from disk. You can also make a driver which makes areas "unuseable" by encrypting them and automatically decrypting them as soon as anything tries to access them. A task in the background can continuously try to make as many pages "unuseable" as possible. Then, if you make sure that the key is zapped at reboot (e.g. because it is at a place overwritten at boot) you can be sure that only very small areas are useable by an attacker who wants to steal your RAM contents. You can also combine swapping out to disk and encrypting, as long as your driver still knows which of the two kinds of "not accessible" is the case when that make-useable-on- demand call is triggered. Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
