[gclist] GC security

[Basile STARYNKEVITCH]

>>>>> "Henry" == Henry G Baker <hbaker@netcom.com> writes:


[lots of interesting stuff deleted]

    Henry> (BTW, this is a serious security problem with GC in
    Henry> general, which is that it is _too lazy_ about actually
    Henry> overwriting bits after deletion.  This is why I advocate
    Henry> 'linear' types in addition to GC, so that people can force
    Henry> prompt deletion for certain important types.)

It seems to me that copying or compacting GCs are more secure, because
only live data is copyied (and I assume that unused memory is
"physically" freed, eg by munmap(2)-ing, i.e. memory unmapping by the
virtual memory subsystem in the kernel).

I probably didn't understand Henry's argument. (I did read some of his
papers, but don't understand well the connection to GC safety).


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Basile STARYNKEVITCH   ----  Commissariat a l Energie Atomique (civil)
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