On Mon, 8 Jan 2001, Michael Shmulevich wrote: > > When a new user process is started will its user space be cleared by the > > kernel or is there a potential leak from an older user process ? > > Usually it is defied by the loader. If the data section contents is set to > LOAD, then the contents of the section will be loaded from disk (no leak), > if not -- whatever values left i nmemory will be there, or exactly, the > virtual page of some other proccess that was swapped out or ended. What!??? I'm assume you are writing about executing a new program and not forking a new process here. In the latter case no memory is changed. When you exec a new program, any allocated memory is cleared by the kernel before returning to the user space. It would be a huge security hole otherwise. -- + Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available +
