[OpenAFS-devel] Attacks against AFS lead to crashing machines

[chas williams]

In message <OF23BB87F5.4187637A-ON85256BD2.0019C66C@in.ibm.com>,"Srikanth Vishwanathan" writes:
>I think I know atleast one reason for the client crashes.

i have also noticed increasing numbers of 'attacks' on afs clients.
considering the readability of the afs code in places, this 
does worry me a bit.

>is that rxi_Alloc may call osi_Alloc (afs_osi_Alloc()) or
>osi_AllocMediumSpace() or osi_AllocSmall() depending on the
>system type and/or the amount of memory needed.
>...
>This is because on Linux, rxi_Alloc always calls osi_Alloc
>(afs_osi_Alloc), which makes it OK.

i think this raises a bigger question.  should afs still
be using its own 'internal' allocater?  most modern
operating systems memory allocators should be robust enough
that this is no longer necessary.