Insecure hardware (was Re: gets(3) nonsense)

[Henry Spencer]

In article <2330 at cbnews.ATT.COM> lvc at cbnews.ATT.COM (Lawrence V. Cipriani) writes:
>... To what extent can hardware be at fault?  Was the one of the
>reasons the two processor types were attacked because they would allow
>code to be executed in data space?  Is this what happened?  Some other
>machines will produce a core dump if you pull this...

One should remember that dynamic code generation (necessarily into the
data space) followed by execution of the resulting code can be a very
valuable technique for things like interpreters.  One can finesse that
with a "change data to code" system call, but the system-call overhead
can hurt badly.
-- 
SunOSish, adj:  requiring      |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
32-bit bug numbers.            | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry at zoo.toronto.edu