Re: core dump

[klmitch () MIT EDU (Kev)]

> my question is that i am new into the topic of vulnerability development
> world and i really wonder why unix like OS dumps core files and what is the
> importance of it.

A core file is a debugging aid.  Basically, it contains a snap-shot of the
entire memory area of the process, along with the values of the CPU registers,
at the time of a fatal error, such as a SEGV (memory access to a protected
region) or a BUS (unaligned access or sometimes page fault) or ABRT or QUIT.
(Note this is not an exhaustive list of signals...)  One can use a debugging
tool such as gdb to poke at the core file in an attempt to figure out what
went wrong to cause the problem.

--
Kevin L. Mitchell <klmitch () mit edu>