Flaw Found iIn Ethernet Device Drivers 429
Licensed2Hack writes "Security researchers have discovered a serious vulnerability that may be present in many Ethernet device drivers that is causing the devices to broadcast sensitive information over networks.
Seems the device driver writers couldn't be bothered with a memset() call. Eweek has their typical (puffy, low on tech details) take on it here.
Since they don't specify the OS, I'm assuming these are drivers for Windows." It's actually Linux, *BSD, and Windows.
Hah! (Score:2, Funny)
Or maybe (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Or maybe (Score:3, Informative)
Or maybe (Score:2)
Cisco isn't vulnerable: (Score:5, Informative)
and
Full CERT Advisory [cert.org]
Re:Or maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
"The Linux, NetBSD and Microsoft Windows operating systems are known to have vulnerable link layer implementations, and it is extremely likely that other operating systems are also affected."
Am I the only one tired of this? (Score:4, Funny)
Great, first we had users who posted replies without reading the articles.
Then we had editors who posted articles without checking if they had already been posted.
Now we have users who submit articles that are neither read by the user nor the editor before being posted.
What's next? The person who writes the article doesn't read it before a user sees the link, submits it for an editor to post twice in the same day?
Re:Or maybe (Score:2)
Re:Or maybe (Score:3, Informative)
#
Quote
Clue. (Score:3, Informative)
Thanks to some vagueness in the standards defining IP datagram transmission on Ethernet networks, it's not entirely clear exactly how the padding should be done. Some implementations do it on the NIC, while others handle it in the software device driver
Ding! This means that all NICs that have the problem have that problem under any OS unless the card can be overcome by software. Additionally, "software drivers" under any OS can have the same problem.
Is the problem more likely under, M$ junk? Of course it is. The free software world will move to fix any driver problems, and there are only a few dozen drivers in the world to work the thousands of different brand name cards. The closed source world has thousands of drivers to fix by companies that may not even exist anymore, and because it's closed and the user won't know any better, why would anyone bother?
Of course this completely ignores whole models that are available in the free software world to prevent such problems of untrusted networks in the first place. I don't really care if my NIC pads packets with chunks of the last SSH packet. Encryped noise is just that and you can have as many packets as you like of it. If you played it over a speaker it would sound like this "Shushshhshhhshhhhhshhhhsh!" and I sugest you do shush.
Re:Or maybe Slashdot wont post news unless its ant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or maybe Slashdot wont post news unless its ant (Score:3, Funny)
If you don't know why by now, you haven't been paying attention.
TWW
Flaw found.... (Score:3, Funny)
You assume too much (Score:3, Informative)
"The Linux, NetBSD and Microsoft Windows operating systems are known to have vulnerable link layer implementations, and it is extremely likely that other operating systems are also affected."
Re:You assume too much (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting fact: Microsoft Windows is mentioned as "not vulnerable".
Re:You assume too much (Score:3, Funny)
Don't believe you...
You were just trying get TWO Score+5's and reap the karma...
Blame it on packet fragmentation if you like...
Nick...
Re:You assume too much (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You assume too much (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean Microsoft said they aren't vulnerable. [cert.org] But look at these weasel words: "However, we have found samples in our documentation that, when compiled without alteration, could yield a driver that could contain this issue." Draw your own conclusions.
Re:You assume too much (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft became responsible for other people's code the moment they got into the business of signing other people's code.
If Microsoft wants me to believe that drivers which have been approved and signed by Microsoft are any more trustworthy than drivers which haven't been signed and approved by Microsoft, then Microsoft need to accept responsibility for ensuring that is the case.
You can't say "don't use that code, I haven't approved it. Use this one instead..." and then say "well it's not my fault if the code I demand you use is broken, I didn't write it!"
Not Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Read between the lines... (Score:2)
Read the f*cking article. (Score:4, Informative)
Straight from the article
OK, it's slashdot, so we expect people to post comments without reading the article, but it's a little ridiculous that the submitter didn't even bother.
Re:Read the f*cking article. (Score:2, Informative)
The only point of interrogation is that SAMPLES that when compiled without changes, will have the reported problem (http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/JPLA-5BGP7V)
Re: Read the f*cking CERT note (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Read the f*cking article. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Read the f*cking article. (Score:2)
I could also point out that it's a little r i diculous that you misspelt a word you were quoting from my post, but that would be a bit pedantic, so I won't bother.
Flaw Found iIn Slashdot Editors (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Flaw Found iIn Slashdot Editors (Score:2, Funny)
well (Score:5, Interesting)
One wonders whether it would be possible to build a fix into the operating system, or would that be too great an abstraction?
Re:well (Score:3, Informative)
One wonders whether it would be possible to build a fix into the operating system, or would that be too great an abstraction?
Well, all you need to do is set your firewall to drop all ICMP packets. Theoretically, someone could exploit this over TCP, but because TCP allows piggybacking, and because it generally has more overhead than simple ICMP packets, it's unlikely that you can easily trick a remote system to respond with a TCP packet that's less than 48 bytes.
And by the way, if you use Mandrake Linux and the firewall software that ships with it, Shorewall (basically a collection of iptables rules), ICMP packets are already being dropped when they reach your system.
Re:well (Score:3, Informative)
Re:well (Score:3, Informative)
From the initial @stake advisory:
Re:well (Score:3, Insightful)
And hence one of the greatnesses of open source. We don't have to wait for them to do it. Someone can go in and clear up the issue in all the Ethernet drivers just like that. No muss, no fuss. Fixed drivers.
CERT link (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/412115 [cert.org].
common fault (Score:5, Informative)
Also Access doesn't clean out deleted data.
Re:common fault (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:common fault (Score:3, Informative)
Nowadays I send all docs out in pdf format.
And MS-Word ships same over the net... (Score:2)
Wow.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wow.. (Score:5, Informative)
bb4now,
PMC
Re:Wow.. (Score:4, Informative)
A bridge doesn't route, it only segments ethernet segments and reduces the amount of traffic going to the section it is in front of.
Re:Wow.. (Score:2, Insightful)
A lame bug, but at least not a very exploitably-useful one.
Re:Wow.. (Score:2, Insightful)
So, even if we are on the ethernet switched network the window-of-oportunity to actualy sniff some data is 46 - 28 = 18 bytes (46 for the minimum ethernet packet and 28 for the minimum ICMP echo reply data within it). So we can intercept 18 bytes of random data from ethernet stack. What are the chances that there is some interesting data (passwords, keys
Furthermore the traffic can be encrypted in case of VLANs, Tuneling or ssh-ed connections.
Anyway, why should we inspect mere 18 bytes of provoked packet (yes, we have to provoke the ICMP echo reply packet so it can be transfered to our NIC directly) data when we are directly on the ethernet segment? In this case it is enough to bump the NIC to promiscous mode and to read all the data we can get from the segment
Well IMHO there is a lot more interesting data in (TCP|UDP)/IP packets then in some 18 byte buffer crap at the end of ICPM echo reply ethernet packet.
bb4now,
PMC
Re:Wow.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, the data could potentially be from a random buffer in memory, depending on the driver and network stack implementation. So, it could even contain portions of decrypted private keys, for example. But, that's highly unlikely, and it would be hard to find that information in the sea of other random info you'd get from these packets.
Yes, it's hard to exploit, but it's also a very serious bug.
Links to actual article (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.atstake.com/research/advisories/2003
Here's a link to the CERT notice:
http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/412115
Both articles have more info than the article that was posted for this story. Silly rabbit.
Enjoy.
Tom
I can read! (Score:5, Interesting)
SSH (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, since you have to read ethernet packets, they'd either be listening to traffic on a VPN, or they'd be on their target's LAN.
More reasons to be afraid of your company's BOFH.
Re:SSH (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SSH (Score:5, Informative)
Your hit-chance is pretty bad, though.
Re:SSH (Score:3, Informative)
I'd be more worried about secure credit card transactions on web servers that don't get patched soon and don't renew their private keys.
Re:SSH (Score:5, Informative)
No, the SSH private keys are never in an ethernet packet to begin with. You can only get information from the target system that it a) has already sent somewhere else; b) got from a pool of free memory and then sent you packet with fewer than 46 bytes of data in it (i.e. ICMP). I find it hard to believe that this is remotely useful since you only get up to 46 bytes - so your ssh key would have to be in a block of memory that had been deallocated back to the kernel memory pool - and the ethernet driver has to be lucky enough to then allocate that memory when it needed more buffer. But why would it need to allocate more buffer when all you're asking from it is a packet that contains less than 46 bytes?
The idea that it's a useful exploit from that standpoint that you can read a remote systems memory is a bit preposterous. It all seems like it requires a coincidence on the order of planetary alignment for any valuable information to be extracted from this bug. Yes, you can grab parts of previously sent packets - but in a world where all sensitive information is encrypted prior to transmission this flaw is just moot. Fix it, move on, nothing to see here.
Re:SSH (Score:4, Insightful)
The chance of fishing a usable key out of 256 Meg of memory soup, given a random look at a handful of leaking bytes in each packet, is slim indeed. The attacker has no way to control which bytes leak and doesn't know where in memory they came from. This is nothing remotely as serious as a buffer overflow, where the attacker gets to choose which bytes overflow into executable memory, and thus can exercise a great deal of control. Still, by sitting and watching long enough, maybe, just maybe the attacker will be able to piece together something useful.
Now, this is where Linux, BSD et al really show show their strength: this driver leak either has already been patched (sorry, I'm too lazy to check the change logs just now) or will be by the end of the day, and the patched kernel will be immediately available for download. Or I can get the patch and apply it myself if I'm in a panic (which I'm not for the above reasons).
Microsoft on the other hand has to round up dozens of vendors and get them all to apply fixes, and there will be stragglers. Then there is the question of how to get the patches onto customer's machines. It's a safe bet that the majority of home users will never patch this vulnerability, so if attackers need plenty of time to exploit the leak on Windows, they've got it.
Of course, Microsoft's favored solution to the latter problem is to take the liberty of patching your system for you, having required you to agree to this when you installed. You must then trust Microsof not to go further and install additional, unasked-for code, for example, something to send back all your web search terms to Microsoft HQ. [theregister.co.uk] I don't know about you, but for me, but that's too high an asking price for automatic security updates.
Microsoft Certified Drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't forget that after the vendors fixed it, the new drivers have to be re-certified and signed by Microsoft or their Great OSes[tm] will bark on everyone installing them - which wouldn't shine a bright light on the vendor.
Last thing I remember was that having a new driver certified by Microsoft takes several weeks to months.
An interesting question aside: If so many drivers (if you believe in the article's wording) are affected, why did they pass the Microsoft quality/security "certification" in the first place?
Seems to me that their certification tests aren't worth the bits they're written on - probably they just check that the drivers don't crash the system and so on. (well, and sometimes, not even this.)
Re:SSH (Score:2)
Be nice to us and we'll be nice to you.
If I remember my childhood and early adulthood correctly, people have never been nice to geeks. Should we hold a grudge?
Re:Someone please mod down wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
you mean his post, or yours?
Block IMCP if you don't need it
Ahem; if you run TCP/IP, you always need it.
ICMP is used for control messages between systems - it's used for control messages (the 'C' and 'M' in ICMP) for TCP and UDP packets.
Without ICMP, your connections can take longer, or (in some cases) not work at all. All modern OSes support path MTU discovery - and PMTU discovery relies on ICMP messages. If you block these messages, your clients will be unable to reach sites if part of your path to them has a smaller MTU than the MTU of your local interface.
You may know a lot about SSH, but you don't know squat about TCP/IP. ICMP is used for more than just 'ping'.
Re:I can read! (Score:5, Informative)
In addition, you also have to be able to get this data. As mentioned by mmol_6453, you can only get the Ethernet frames if you are on the same LAN or if the victim is tunneling the Ethernet frames through a VPN. If there is an IP router between you and the victim, you will probably not be able to get the leaked bytes (and I am glad to see that several routers listed in the CERT advisory [cert.org] are not vulnerable).
The advisory says: "the leaked information may originate from dynamic kernel memory, from static system memory allocated to the device driver, or from a hardware buffer located on the network interface card.". If you are using a broadcast Ethernet medium, then the leaked information collected from the static memory of the device driver or from the hardware buffer on the NIC will probably be much less than what could be collected by running a packet sniffer on the same Ethernet segment, because the leaked bytes will come from previous packets. However, this is different if you are running a switched Ethernet network (not broadcast) because the packet sniffers are less useful in this case.
As I see it, the only real potential for information leakage comes from the device drivers that are leaking bytes from the dynamically allocated kernel memory. Then you could get almost anything from that machine, not only something that is supposed to be sent over the network. On the other hand, it is probably very hard to predict what will be leaked.
It would be interesting if the advisory could give a list of operating systems that are leaking random information from the kernel versus those that are leaking information from the previous packets (in the driver or in the NIC). I would be more worried about the former than the latter.
Re:I can read! (Score:5, Insightful)
On top of this, and everybody seems to be ignoring this basic fact, but after you get up to 18 bytes of information out of an ethernet packet, you *still* have to chain enough of these together to be a useful chunk of data. The problem drops significantly when you add more machines to the network, because it gets steadily harder and harder to put them together in order from the same machine. (Yeah, I know, you can use the mac or IP address to chain them together, but ethernet allows out-of-order packet delivery)
Re:I can read! (Score:5, Interesting)
The 2924xl and 2950 allow you to block any mac address except broadcast addresses. So if you you flood the network with packets with one broadcast address and one real mac address you overflow its table it goes into a nice bridge mode. With a decent box it takes nearly two whole minutes to crack a single vendors mac codes.
As long as US compaines keep selling out to the short term stock price and sending critical stuff off 1/2 way around the world to be designed by people with no clue about real security, their products are going to be crap and full of holes. At one point I could trust Cisco and Sun but now they are almost at the level of most beige box builders but with them I know who I can go visit to get my money back.
All the new gear I've been buying is Kiwi designed stuff made by ATI. After a decade of dealing with cisco, I can't recomend any of their newer gear. the Current cisco mac address overflow was fixed by real engineers back in 1993. I'm not sure what kind of idiots they get to write their current code since bug history means nothing to them.
Why don't I put this on bugtraq and get it fixed? Its simple, The idiots that put the bug together have good jobs and the good people that know this stuff don't because of cost cutting.
Not a hard fix for open source (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, the big problem here is going to be MS. I doubt they'll introduce a fix at all.
Re:Not a hard fix for open source (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft Corporation Not Vulnerable 3-Jan-2003
So are they such the big problem you thought they were going to be?
Re:Not a hard fix for open source (Score:2, Informative)
...or... (Score:2)
Details from @stake (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.atstake.com/research/advisories/2003/a
And their etherleak report PDF:
http://www.atstake.com/research/advisories/2003/a
Re:Details from @stake (Score:5, Informative)
Here's another vulnerability. (Score:3, Interesting)
The "vulnerability" is very similar in behavior to the one described in the article but, is at the IP level rather than the link layer. The vulnerability has to do with padding of IP packets on Windows systems. Windows uses the contents of one of its buffers (sorry I can't say which one) to pad IP packets.
This is very easily reproducable when sniffing ping packets. The data portion of the packets are padded with the contents of the buffer. There are other utilities that demonstrate this behavior as well, but it is most easily reproduced with a simple ping and the bigger the ping packet the more data you'll see.
If you have been using IE and then sniff ping packets, you will see the data from your previous browsing. If you just logged in, you can sometimes find your password padding the ping packets.
As I said I have verified this on all WIndows platforms except XP. I have also looked for it on numerous Linux platforms and have NOT found Linux to suffer the same vulnerability. That is, Linux does NOT appear vulnerable.
Your computer is broadcasting sensitive info ! (Score:5, Funny)
deja vu..... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:deja vu..... (Score:3, Informative)
-russ
Slow newsday for eweek then. (Score:3, Interesting)
The command 'ping -n 10 -l 1472 ' sends a packet that's padded with 'abcd...uvwabcd...uvwabcd'.
The echo reply is padded with the same characters, apparently just pulled from the request and stuck in the reply. So far I've tried pinging W2K, HPUX, a Cisco router, and a Debian box. All return the contents of the initial request as padding.
Is there more to replicating this than they let on? Or are they just full of poop?
Re:Slow newsday for eweek then. (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0792.txt?number=0792
Re:Slow newsday for eweek then. (Score:5, Informative)
What you do is send an ethernet frame that is too small by the standard's requirements. The reply will come back padded to meet the minimum size requirement. Where the padding comes from is apparently the problem...apparently it's just malloc'd, not cleared in any way.
This means, for one thing, that you have to be on the local LAN with your target, since any routing of the packet will re-write the ethernet header, blowing away your sneakiness. It also means that standard ping won't do. You have to be able to break the rules for ethernet to see the effect.
OpenBSD (Score:3, Funny)
Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 7 years! Oh yeah, and 1 hole embedded in the Ethernet dri...
"Shit. We ran out of space on the CD cover."
Talisman
Wanna get pissed? [remail.org]
Why is this "devastating"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdotted your credibility-and everyone sees it (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, I am careful about checking my facts, and I am assuming that only 5 people will read my post. I would hope I would put a LITTLE more effort into my fact checking tho if I thought it was going to get 1,000,000 hits.
Since the poster and the editors don't check their facts, I am assuming they don't.
Slashdot is the first site I hit for tech info. And typically, while exagerrated, the attacks on MS have basis at least.
But an ASSUMPTION like above about "Well, there's a problem, it must be Windows!" just makes my ears perk up immediately and want to check the facts. Why doesn't it for the Slashdot editors?
WHY would you assume that? Just from the blurb the poster included it immediately seems the kind of oversight that would have the POTENTIAL at least to affect multiple systems.
And yes, I realize that Windows drivers written by third-parties have been targetted, I find it amazingly amusing the native Windows drivers have been determined not to have this issue
XQ says... (Score:2)
Just a guess...
@stake Advisory (Score:2)
It also shows sample frame captures illustrating leakage of HTTP traffic.
Flaw Found iIn Slashdot News Title (Score:4, Funny)
Good point! (Score:2)
Re:Flaw Found iIn Slashdot News Title (Score:3, Funny)
Just give it another 8 hours or so
Good gods, RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
The article submitters now can't be bothered to read the articles? You know, the bit in the article where it says "The Linux, NetBSD and Microsoft Windows operating systems are known to have vulnerable link layer implementations, and it is extremely likely that other operating systems are also affected."!?
Back to more important issues, like the actual content of the article ... I'm reading linux/net right now, anyone have any definite answers, and could point me to (say) source for where we do do this?
Oh god, lets hype it all up (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod me however you want, I'm a coward to
The drivers comply with the RFC (Score:5, Informative)
RFC 2119 says "3. SHOULD This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a particular item, but the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course."
Is this vulnerability really useful? (Score:2)
Looks pretty harmless (Score:5, Insightful)
I am sure someone will rush to correct me if I am wrong about this.
Re:Looks pretty harmless (Score:3, Informative)
No! It would most likely be data from some other packet that was sent or received previously. The OS doesn't allocate network buffers willy-nilly, it tries to reuse the buffers if possible. This means the memory used to send a short packet is most likely going to be reused from a previous network buffer. Meaning the data out on the wire is probably going to be someone else's network traffic that you shouldn't have seen.
I agree that the problem would be much less severe if you really were getting bytes from random spots in memory, but that isn't what happens. Operating systems tend to allocate a big chunk of memory for buffers, then reuse it over and over.
This Was Intentional (Score:2)
If you look at recent "environmental" "news" they've put up on here they've done the same sort of thing: did not read the target article or totally disregarded it and added their own political opinion.
Hemos has an anti-Microsoft axe to grind. Not that I blame him there but I think he's a wee bit too eager.
This flaw is a non-issue (Score:5, Informative)
Consider the length of time this so-called vulnerability has lurked in the device driver code for all those operating systems, than ask why no one discovered the problem sooner. Could it be that there's nothing to be worried about?
I'm guessing this problem has gone undetected so long because uber-short frames don't naturally occur on most Ethernet installations. Networks typically send real data, not empty frames, that's why we build them in the first place. You have to intentionally generate super-small frames if you want to see them. All the examples @Stake provides are based on ICMP Echo/Echo Replies, where you can specify the packet length at the command line. Show me some real network traffic that exhibits this problem, than I'll start to worry.
Still not convinced? Well, consider that you can't exploit the issue beyond even a single router, and that the vulnerability in most cases is just rehashed data, stuff that's already gone out on the wire. How big a security issue is that? Seems like the least of my problems. I'd worry more about one un-patched system on the network or one stupid marketroid opening a TELNET secession to the web server than I'd worry about this.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and declare this a non-issue. I'm sure the guys over at @Stake are happy to have something to show their bosses (and the media) so soon after the holidays, but it just doesn't look very serious from where I'm sitting.
noticed this 6 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
We informed CERT/IBM - nothing happened.
NOW it it makes all the headlines.
what impact does it have - none, unless the stuff in the PADing area contains the unencrypted data that was originally send encryped. Or am I missing something like I normally do?
This is much ado about nothing.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever print the results to the screen??
If you have, you know that garbage comes out, and is pretty much undecipherable. The reason it is not readable is that the the program is interpreting each byte as a character, and the data is most likely not ASCII.
This is an analog to what is happening with these "bad" drivers. The driver is simply reading more memory than contains actual data, and sending it along with the good data, since the receiving station will strip off the padding (bad data) it shouldn't matter. What the author of the article is implying is that someone might spend the time to try to decipher the padding and find sensitive data from your system. Good luck to any person who wishes to decipher almost randomly sampled data from a memory map. They will have the same problem as the C program mentioned above: they will have no clue how to interpret the data, and will have to trial and error "known" data types. Even then, they only get 45 bytes of data to use as context. So even if they got ASCII characters, how are they to know if it is a password or part of a Gnumeric spreadsheet??
So THAT'S why... (Score:5, Funny)
tips (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. This is pretty hardcore, especially for networking devices. My biggest fear related to this has to do with the increasing use of VLANs to bound logical security zones. Let's say port 1 and 8 are on different VLANs - 1 is in the private network, 8 is in the DMZ. They use the same ASIC, so padding data is effectively shared between both. You've already owned a DMZ host, so you can use it to listen to ethernet padding data that might contain traffic once transacted on port 1. Listen long enough, and you might get some juicy passwords otherwise invisible to the DMZ.
No guarantees, but until we get updated drivers, put in a snort rule for undersized packets flying around in your public networks, and make sure your VLAN boundaries occur on port group boundaries (Most Nortel switches, for example, have different ASICs for ports grouped physically on the front of the switch.)
3Com/USR?... (Score:3, Interesting)
How I'm feeling (Score:3, Funny)
Posted with an infected card... (Score:5, Funny)
Fixed in 2.4 (Score:3, Informative)
This is silly. (Score:4, Informative)
Much to my suprise, @Stake's name was on it. Looking further, I see that Eweek has genuinely made a mountain out of a molehill. Seventeen bytes of randomly chosen data can be snatched from a remote machine, provided it's literally in the same building as the attacker, and provided it's got a cheap-o network card. Pardon me while I quake in fear for the safety of the little children.
Why do we have to be in the same building? Because if the packet in question goes through most routers, they're quite likely to crumple the bits up and throw them away because of it's past use as a means for covert communication.
Their statement about it being "trivial to exploit" should have stopped at just saying it was "trivial". It was good of @Stake to bring this to the attention of programmers, although quite possibly publishing in PDF format made it look a little more important than it really is.
Re:A call (Score:5, Informative)
According to this post [iu.edu] by Alan Cox on the kernel mailing list,
patches for the problem are currently in testing already.
Re:memset on windows?? (Score:3, Interesting)
memset exists for compatibility, but it's just a wrapper around FillMemory.
memset is a standard C library function. Here's a hint: the standard C library exists under Windows, too. I have never called ZeroMemory or FillMemory, period.
Re:memset on windows?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, for security reasons, Windows ensures that no app will ever find remnants of another app's data in its memory space (all allocated memory is erased before is't given to the requester), which significantly reduces the risk that sensitive data would be transmitted.
please keep feeling safe because *n*x is so damn secure by defi^H^H^H^H religion.
Here is a clue for you.
This is about drivers, leaking kernel memory, not drivers leaking application memory.
Drivers are not applications, since drivers run in kernel space. Since memory is generally allocated in Linux by mmapping files, applications can not get "garbage data" from the operating system.
memset is part of the ISO/IEC 9899 standard for the C programming language. If your Windows library doesn't have it, complain to your vendor. This has nothing to do with Unix vs. Windows.
Re:Stupid (Score:3, Informative)
Oh and I might add that this won't work over an IP connection only (e.g. across the net). You need to be on the same ethernet segment as the target. This greatly limits the usefulness again. While we're at it, if you were on their segment, and it's not switched, you likely already are seeing every packet the target machine transmits anyways. Oh and by the way, there's exploits out there already to make most switches give up this data as well, so in all likelyhood this gained you nothing.