Theo de Raadt deraadt@openbsd.org wrote:
This discussion about the malloc heap is ridiculous. Obviously it is programmer error to lock the permissions on memory you will free for reuse. But you can't fix this problem with malloc(), without breaking other extremely common circumstances where the allocation of memory and PERMANENT-USE-WITHOUT-RELEASE of such memory are seperated over a memory boundary, unless you start telling all open source library authors
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ library boundary, sorry
to always use MAP_SEALABLE in their mmap() calls.
Example:
1. libcrypto (or some other library) has some ways to allocate memory and provide it to an application. 2. Even if this is using malloc(), heap allocations over a pagesize are page-aligned, so even then following assumptions are sound. 3. I have an application which uses that memory, but will never release the memory until program termination 4. The library interface is public and used by many programs, so the library author has a choice of using MAP_SEALABLE or not using MAP_SEALABLE
Due to your choice, my application cannot make lock the memory permissions unless that library author chooses MAP_SEALABLE
If they choose to use MAP_SEALABLE, all programs get this memory you consider less safe.
Exactly what is being gained here?