Helpers for clearing sensitive data on the stack and heap

Some kinds of data should not be kept in memory any longer than they are needed. For instance, cryptographic keys and intermediate values should be erased as soon as they are no longer needed.

The Rust language helps prevent the accidental reading of leftover values on the stack or the heap; however, means outside the program (for instance a debugger, or even physical access to the hardware) can still read the leftover values. For long-lived processes, key material might be found in the memory long after it should have been discarded.

This crate provides two mechanisms to help minimize leftover data.

The ClearOnDrop wrapper holds a mutable reference to sensitive data (for instance, a cipher state), and clears the data when dropped. While the mutable reference is held, the data cannot be moved, so there won't be leftovers due to moves; the wrapper itself can be freely moved. Alternatively, it can hold data on the heap (using a Box<T>, or possibly a similar which allocates from a mlocked heap).

The clear_stack_on_return function calls a closure, and after it returns, overwrites several kilobytes of the stack. This can help overwrite temporary variables used by cryptographic algorithms, and is especially relevant when running on a short-lived thread, since the memory used for the thread stack cannot be easily overwritten after the thread terminates.

Preventing compiler optimizations

If the compiler determines the data is not used after being cleared, it could elide the clearing code. Aditionally, the compiler could inline a called function and the stack clearing code, using separate areas of the stack for each. This crate has three mechanisms which prevent these unwanted optimizations, selected at compile time via cargo features.

The fastest mechanism uses inline assembly, which is only available on nightly Rust. It is enabled through the nightly feature, and does not need a working C compiler.

The second mechanism, which is the default, uses a call to a dummy C function. It works on stable Rust, but needs a working C compiler.

The third mechanism is a fallback, which attempts to confuse the optimizer through the use of atomic instructions. It should not be used unless necessary, since it's less reliable. It is enabled by the no_cc feature, works on stable Rust, and does not need a C compiler.

License

Licensed under either of

• Apache License, Version 2.0, (LICENSE-APACHE or http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
• MIT license (LICENSE-MIT or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

at your option.

Contribution

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.