Serious flaw in critical applications: Plaintext passwords in process memory
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Due to a loophole in VPN clients and password managers, confidential data remains in the process memory even after logging off and can be read out.

cross-posted from: https://zerobytes.monster/post/2458702

The original post: /r/mullvadvpn by /u/Imaginary_Dot5703 on 2024-08-14 05:20:49.

The unencrypted data should only be in memory when needed (copied to clipboard, shown on screen etc). After use the objects handling sensitive should overwrite themselves.

A string falling out of scope in C++, or an object being left to the garbage collector is still readable and not overwritten by default. It’s a very easy problem to solve in C++, either through custom allocators or destructors. But it makes a bigger difference when objects having short lifetimes

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