how to keep c++ variables in RAM securely?

Question

I\'m working on a C++ application which is keeping some user secret keys in the RAM. This secret keys are highly sensitive & I must minimize risk of any kind of attack again

Answer 1

As the other answers mentioned, you may implement a software solution but if your program runs on a general purpose machine and OS and the attacker has access to your machine it will not protect your sensitive data. If you data is really very sensitive and an attacker can physically access the machine a general software solution won't be enough.

I once saw some platforms dealing with very sensible data which had some sensors to detect when someone was accessing the machine physically, and which would actively delete the data when that was the case.

You already mentioned cold boot attack, the problem is that the data in RAM can be accessed until minutes after shut down on general RAM.