brk's zero-fill behavior on VAXen :-)

[Arthur David Olson]

> > Can system performance be improved by avoiding zero filling of the new
> > memory?
> 
> Yes, a little bit, but this would be an obvious security hole.

What's clearly called for is a memory mapping feature that instructs the
hardware to randomize the data in a page once it's been abandoned.  A likely
name would be "Destroy on Deallocation," or, for short, "DoD."  Such a
feature would allow paranoid programs to ensure security without penalizing
other programs.
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