55 lines
2.2 KiB
Plaintext
55 lines
2.2 KiB
Plaintext
.\"
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.\" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.\" "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
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.\" <phk@FreeBSD.org> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
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.\" can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
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.\" this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return. Poul-Henning Kamp
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.\" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.\"
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.\" $FreeBSD$
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.\"
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.ds RH The problems
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.NH
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The problems
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.PP
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Even though malloc(3) is a lot simpler to use
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than the raw brk(2)/sbrk(2) interface,
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or maybe exactly because
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of that,
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a lot of problems arise from its use.
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.IP
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Writing to memory outside the allocated chunk.
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The most likely result being that the data structure used to hold
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the links and flags about this chunk or the next one gets thrashed.
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.IP
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Freeing a pointer to memory not allocated by malloc.
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This is often a pointer that points to an object on the stack or in the
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data-section, in newer implementations of C it may even be in the text-
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section where it is likely to be readonly.
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Some malloc implementations detect this, some don't.
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.IP
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Freeing a modified pointer. This is a very common mistake, freeing
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not the pointer malloc(3) returned, but rather some offset from it.
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Some mallocs will handle this correctly if the offset is positive.
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.IP
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Freeing the same pointer more than once.
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.IP
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Accessing memory in a chunk after it has been free(3)'ed.
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.PP
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The handling of these problems have traditionally been weak.
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A core-dump was the most common form for "handling", but in rare
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cases one could experience the famous "malloc: corrupt arena."
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message before the core-dump.
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Even worse though, very often the program will just continue,
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possibly giving wrong results.
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.PP
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An entirely different form of problem is that
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the memory returned by malloc(3) can contain any value.
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Unfortunately most kernels, correctly, zero out the storage they
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provide with brk(2), and thus the storage malloc returns will be zeroed
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in many cases as well, so programmers are not particular apt to notice
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that their code depends on malloc'ed storage being zeroed.
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.PP
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With problems this big and error handling this weak, it is not
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surprising that problems are hard and time consuming to find and fix.
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