On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 09:18:50PM +1100, u...@vk2pj.dyndns.org wrote: > Hi Xin, > > On 2009-Mar-28 04:00:46 +0000, Xin LI <delp...@freebsd.org> wrote: > >Log: > > When allocating memory, zero out them if we don't intend to overwrite them > > all; before freeing memory, zero out them before we release it as free > > heap. This will eliminate some potential information leak issue. > > Given that db runs with the same privileges as the process using it, I > don't see how zeroing memory eliminates any information leak - the > process can directly open and read the underlying db file itself. > Zeroing on allocation may fix any potential issue with uninitialised > structures and prevent the return of garbage in "holes" but that's not > an information leak.
Consider /etc/pwd.db. It's world readable, but written by a program that also wrote /etc/spwd.db which definitely is not. -- Brooks
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