Bugtraq mailing list archives
Re: Suggestion: erase data posted to the Web
From: Nick Lamb <njl98r () ecs soton ac uk>
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2004 15:00:50 +0100
On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 11:30:00AM -0700, Andrew Daviel wrote:
It occurs to me that, while an unprivileged process cannot read system memory directly, that a simple allocation of a large chunk of memory might get data freed up or abandoned by previously running processes. Certain data, such as credit card numbers and SINs, have a predictable pattern that a regex such as /4530[\s]{0,1}[\d]{4}[\s]{0,1}[\d]{4}[\s]{0,1}[\d]{4}[\s]{0,1}[\d]{4}/ might easily find.
This won't work on a modern Unix (incl Mac OS X or Linux) or Windows, memory made available to a process is cleared (usually with zeros, but sometimes with some magic debug value for reasons that should be obvious to developers) Of course sometimes there are bugs, but that's the same with any security critical behaviour in an operating system. If you find such a bug please report it to your vendor and here on Bugtraq once you're sure. Nick.
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Current thread:
- Suggestion: erase data posted to the Web Andrew Daviel (Jul 07)
- Re: Suggestion: erase data posted to the Web Nick Lamb (Jul 08)
- Re: Suggestion: erase data posted to the Web Luciano Miguel Ferreira Rocha (Jul 08)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: Suggestion: erase data posted to the Web Michael Wojcik (Jul 08)
- Re: Suggestion: erase data posted to the Web devnull (Jul 09)