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Re: zero filling pages

I'm sorry. Did you not see /etc/passwd, /usr/sbin/sshd, /usr/sbin/htttpd, etc on your hard disk?

Mac OS X *is* a multi-user time-sharing system. Furthermore, even if it were a "single-user" OS it is not single-task. A compromised program could easily read other processes memory and spew out valuable information (think CC numbers, Quicken data, your diary entry about your torrid affair with Britney Spears, etc.) onto the internet.

At least this way the compromised program must also gain root access, delve through kmem, and attempt to make sense of that. Security mechanisms in the base-OS are a good thing.

Regards,
Chris

On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 05:39 PM, Nat! wrote:

Probably a FAQ, but OK anyway :)

Whenever I allocate memory with vm_allocate I get a zero filled paged. AFAIK I can't get around this for security reasons, the reason being that another process should not look into another processes memory space, to glean some information.

OK two questions:

Is there really no (reasonable easy) way to get around this ? Zero filling is my bottleneck currently.

I can see the rationale on a multi-user, time sharing system (AKA as the bad old days), but on a single-user machine like Mac OS X I would not deem it important enough. (Mac OS X Server maybe, but Mac OS X Client ?)

Thanks for any comment.

Ciao
Nat!
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--
Chris Douty <email@hidden>
I don't have a funny quotation.
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References: 
 >zero filling pages (From: Nat! <email@hidden>)



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