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Re: Editing and storing encrypted files



On Thu, 07 Sep 2000, Arthur Korn wrote:
> Could somebody more familiar with vim than me please tell me
> (us) wheter this writes anything unencrypted onto disk? If not,
> shall I file a wishlist bug against vim-rt to include this?

Is your swap file (not VIM's, the OS') in an encripted partition? Otherwise,
unless VIM locks memory (like gnupg running suid root will try to and warn
you if it fails to) you could end up with sensitive data in the swap file.

A quick solution is to disable swapping first (but be sure to have enough
RAM :-) ).

Also, unless VIM was written in a rather secure way (gnupg was), it could
easily leave sensitive data in RAM when it exits. I know of no easy solution
to this problem.

-- 
  "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
  them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
  where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
  Henrique Holschuh

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