Secure Private Key Storage for UNIX?

An anonymous reader asks: "Microsoft Windows, from 2000 forward (except ME) offers secure certificate and private storage at the OS level in what is called a protected store. Offline, it's encrypted by a combination of the user's password and a session key stored on the filesystem. When the OS is running, the private keys stored are available to the logged in user, optionally encrypted with another password. The keys are stored in protected memory, so no applications can access them without going through the Microsoft CAPI calls. This code also is FIPS 140-1 level 1 (the best one can get for software cryptography modules) compliant." Does any other OS provide this kind of feature at the OS-level? If so, who? If not, why?

This functionality (especially certified FIPS 140-1 or FIPS 140-2) would be nice to see in UNIX variants. MacOS's key-chain functionality is similar, but stores at the application level, and is not FIPS compliant. An implementation of the protected store functionality will allow applications like Firefox, Thunderbird and gpg to have one common place to obtain private keys and certificates rather than maintaining their own individual key-stores. An additional application for this would be the ability to use hardware PKCS #11 tokens.

I am wondering why this functionality does not exist at the OS level in most OSes except Windows. A number of applications on many platforms have this functionality, but its at the app level, with their own key-stores, and not a standard at the OS level."

Re:FIPS Levels

[Anonymous Coward]

That's odd, OpenSSL was just certified to level 2 (FIPS 140-2).

Yeah? My cryptography goes to 11.

Re:Protected memory

[Goaway]

Yes, when there is no actual Microsoft vulnerability available, the crafty Slashdotter can just imagine that one exists, and still get that refershing feeling of superiority!

Re:Well duh..

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus christ chill dude. Go smoke a jay.