# OpenVas - Warning: using insecure memory!



## bryn1u (Nov 17, 2018)

Hey guys,

I have installed OpenVas scanner on FreeBSD-11.
After lunched i got this message:

```
/usr/local/sbin/openvasmd
Warning: using insecure memory!
root@proton:/ #
```
Im trying to find more info about this but really can't find nothing. Someone can explain to me what's going on with "incsecure memory" ?
Thanks !


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## kpa (Nov 18, 2018)

I would guess that the system you're running the program on doesn't have any special "secure memory". This secure memory is a special dedicated memory that can be trusted not to reveal its contents unless accessed via a well known access protocol. You won't find such memory on your average consumer level systems, only on very high end server systems that are purpose built to have such memory. Memory that is protected by the standard memory management of a modern operating system such as FreeBSD that uses the standard page table/access control mechanism never counts as "secure memory".


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## sko (Nov 20, 2018)

I don't know OpenVas, but this message looks suspiciously like the overly dramatic info message from gpg2:
https://www.gnupg.org/faq/gnupg-faq.html#insecure_memory

On FreeBSD a normal user can't lock down memory, and IIRC the mechanism that GnuPG uses is also heavily linux-specific, so it won't work on any proper UNIX and not even on all linux distros, so gpg2 will print this message you are seeing.

To get rid of it, just add `no-secmem-warning` to your ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf

gpg2(1):


> --no-secmem-warning
> Suppress the warning about "using insecure memory".




(might be sensible to make this the default for the FreeBSD build and/or default config of gpg2?)


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