[tbb-bugs] #17367 [Tor Browser]: Swap files can contain evidence of browsing history

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#17367: Swap files can contain evidence of browsing history
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 Reporter:  arthuredelstein  |          Owner:  tbb-team
     Type:  defect           |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium           |      Milestone:
Component:  Tor Browser      |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal           |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  tbb-disk-leak    |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:  #17208           |         Points:
  Sponsor:                   |
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Comment (by yawning):

 As far as Linux goes, not without patching the kernel.  The situation is
 likely the same on other operating systems.

 On the U*IXes, you could `mlockall()` on process startup assuming that the
 system is configured to allow pinning sufficient memory (`ulimit -l`), but
 given how big the runtime footprint of Firefox is, that's probably a
 really bad idea.  If there's a extremely limited amount of sensitive
 information, then allocating the backing store from a `mlock()`ed region
 may be sufficient, but I suspect patching Firefox to do so would be a
 fairly large undertaking.

 The answer here IMO is: Either use encrypted swap (Vista and later support
 this on Windows, dunno about Darwin), use full disk encryption, or use
 Tails.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/17367#comment:1>
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