Re: [9fans] Re: some #s

[northern snowfall <dbailey27@ameritech.net>]

>
>
>Also, when you reboot your machine, with ctl-alt-del, factotum's pages
>are still sitting in memory somewhere.  Someone can load their own kernel
>and look at the data.  I should also change ctl-alt-del to zero out process
>memory before bringing the system down.  Then there are still crashes...
>
This was my original point. Rebooting does nothing but obfuscate the issue
to a slight extent. Memory leaks are a huge problem, but, can't be evaded
by measures that dont cleanse memory in some fashion. As I'm sure we all
know here, memory zero'd is pointless in situations where the physical hard-
ware can be accessed (even remotely through the kernel or driver bugs, etc).

With some slick I/O techniques, nulled memory can still be read for
resonating
patterns. The only real solution in secure clusters (or other situations) is
to force the supervisor code to perform a NSA trusted random-pattern
cleanse,
or, something more paranoid. But, as is stated above, that doesn't eradicate
the problem of crashes.

I have some solutions I'm looking at in Autumn, but, the papers wont be out
for a while. Though, it probably isn't anything the NIPR/NSA spooks haven't
already done ;)

Don

http://deadchildren.org/~north_

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