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Date:      Sat, 01 Dec 2001 17:22:25 +0100
From:      Extended Laurent Fabre <elf@noos.fr>
Cc:        security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: philosophical question...
Message-ID:  <3C0903C1.9010108@noos.fr>
References:  <200112011642.JAA09819@lariat.org>

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Seems like an OpenBSD feature :P

But from a security point of view, if an attacker can guess
the random seed, i can't see the protection offered...
It will just raise the number of brute force attacks...

No ?

Brett Glass wrote:

>>Would it inconvenience debugging that malloc(3) becomes non
>>deterministic in its layout ?
>>
> 
>>Would the increased uncertainty on program run-time be 
>>good or bad ?
>>
> 
> It could make reproduction of problems more difficult. So, if
> it goes in, I'd like a switch to turn it off.... Maybe a
> sysctl.
> 
> But there's a more serious philosophical issue here. Isn't
> shuffling the heap to avoid attacks really a form of
> "security via obscurity?"
> 
> --Brett Glass
> 
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