Re: NaCl support for Emacs

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:51:13 +0100 Carsten Mattner <address@hidden> wrote: 

CM> isn't the secret to decrypt it available in emacs process space for
CM> ready retrieval?

Not necessarily.  But even if it is, the attacker has to know where to
find the private key and run non-trivial code to use it.  The risk is
smaller than plopping the secret data in plain view.

CM> usually you also overwrite that memory to prevent leakage as
CM> soon as possible.

Yes, and we've discussed how ELisp makes that hard, so this will require
work at the C level.  It's not trivial, absolutely.

CM> unlocking a keychain and keeping that "safe" open for the time
CM> a user is using the environment is common practice.

CM> aren't you going to implement something like gnome's or kde's
CM> locked keychain?

That's a possibility but not my target currently.

CM> there will be at least a couple users demanding integration with
CM> existing keychain systems (kde, osx, gnome, ...).

We have KDE+GNOME in auth-source already, through the Secrets API.  We
also had an attempt to provide an interface to the Mac OS X keychain
last year, but I don't think it was fruitful.

CM> git has recently implemented support for various systems with an
CM> abstraction layer and a caching "daemon".

Yes, I've followed Jeff King's patches with great interest, although I
was absolutely swamped last year and could not test them as I wanted to.
I intend to work on integrating VC and Magit with Git's credentials,
probably with auth-source support.

Ted