From: Doug Barton [mailto:do...@dougbarton.us] > When you say "clear the disk allocated to programs" what do you mean > exactly?
Seriously? When files are deleted, their sectors are simply released to the free space pool without erasing their contents. Allocation of disk sectors without clearing them gives users/programs access to file contents previously stored by other users/programs. As to why this is a problem, well, as they write in some math textbooks, the answer is trivial and left as an exercise to the reader. Well, usually trivial. matthew black california state university, long beach -----Original Message----- From: Doug Barton [mailto:do...@dougbarton.us] Sent: Monday, April 14, 2014 7:48 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: [[Infowarrior] - NSA Said to Have Used Heartbleed Bug for Years] On 04/14/2014 05:50 PM, John Levine wrote: > In article <534c68f4....@cox.net> you write: >> On 4/14/2014 9:38 AM, Matthew Black wrote: >>> Shouldn't a decent OS scrub RAM and disk sectors before allocating >>> them to processes, unless that process enters processor privileged >>> mode and sets a call flag? I recall digging through disk sectors on >>> RSTS/E to look for passwords and other interesting stuff over 30 >>> years ago. >> >> I have been out of the loop for quite a while but my strongly held >> belief is that such scrubbing would be an enormous (and intolerable) >> overhead ... > > It must be quite a while. Unix systems have routinely cleared the RAM > and disk allocated to programs since the earliest days. When you say "clear the disk allocated to programs" what do you mean exactly?
