linux-kernel - Re: Memory zeroed when made available to user process

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Message-ID: <CAFLxGvyJsjWum34Q67UP+EGkg9+W0nPsMpu8mS9PaH8wL3Rd9g@mail.gmail.com>
Date:   Wed, 27 Jun 2018 13:29:05 +0200
From:   Richard Weinberger <richard.weinberger@...il.com>
To:     Jefferson Carpenter <jeffersoncarpenter2@...il.com>
Cc:     Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Memory zeroed when made available to user process

On Wed, Jun 27, 2018 at 11:34 AM, Jefferson Carpenter
<jeffersoncarpenter2@...il.com> wrote:
> Is there a way for a user process to mark memory as 'sensitive' or
> 'non-sensitive' when it is allocated?  That could allow it not to have to be
> zeroed before being allocated to another process.

Isn't this what we have Meltdown and Spectre for? ;-)

No, memory from the kernel is always zeroed.
libc offers malloc() and calloc() for this purpose.

-- 
Thanks,
//richard