Re: Getting passwords from the heap?

[ian <cheeken () cs bu edu>]

>  if anyone knows more about the
> exact workings of memory and page allocation under linux, windows, and other
> OS's I would be great if they shared...

windows 2000 (and probably NT) have a thread named "the zero page thread"
whose responsibility is to zero pages of memory before they are handed to
processes
via malloc and similar mechanisms. if memory serves me right, this is
a requirement for C2 compliance.

plus remember there's a difference between virtual vs physical memory.
if you're not getting pages with some other process' physical memory
backing them (which you shouldn't) you should only get stuff that's accessible
to your process anyways, i think ?

for much much much more detail than i can possibly summon
up after work, consult solomon and russinovich's "inside windows 2000"
the chapter on memory management internals,

ian