From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail203.messagelabs.com (mail203.messagelabs.com [216.82.254.243]) by kanga.kvack.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E91866B00CA for ; Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:20:08 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:19:25 -0800 From: Andrew Morton Subject: Re: [patch 0/8] kzfree() Message-Id: <20090216121925.a34cca6e.akpm@linux-foundation.org> In-Reply-To: <4999C556.7010605@cs.helsinki.fi> References: <20090216142926.440561506@cmpxchg.org> <20090216115931.12d9b7ed.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <4999C556.7010605@cs.helsinki.fi> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mm@kvack.org To: Pekka Enberg Cc: Johannes Weiner , linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:58:14 +0200 Pekka Enberg wrote: > Hi Andrew, > > Andrew Morton wrote: > > On Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:29:26 +0100 Johannes Weiner wrote: > > > >> This series introduces kzfree() and converts callsites which do > >> memset() + kfree() explicitely. > > > > I dunno, this looks like putting lipstick on a pig. > > > > What is the point in zeroing memory just before freeing it? afacit > > this is always done as a poor-man's poisoning operation. > > I think they do it as security paranoia to make sure other callers don't > accidentally see parts of crypto keys, passwords, and such. So I don't > think we can just get rid of the memsets. Ok, you're right - I thought only a couple were doing that but it looks like all of them except for perhaps ATM are being non-stupid. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: email@kvack.org