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This however does not mean it's impossible to write code that leaks memory in such languages. Sometimes critical components of the OS itself can be a source of memory leaks. In Microsoft Windows , for example, the memory use of a Windows Explorer plug-in might drain the available memory to the point of making the entire computer unusable.
In computer science, a memory leak is a type of resource leak that occurs when a computer program incorrectly manages memory allocations [1] in a way that memory which is no longer needed is not released. A memory leak may also happen when an object is stored in memory but cannot be accessed by the running code (i.e. unreachable memory). [2]
When a dangling pointer is used after it has been freed without allocating a new chunk of memory to it, this becomes known as a "use after free" vulnerability. [4] For example, CVE-2014-1776 is a use-after-free vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 through 11 [5] being used by zero-day attacks by an advanced persistent threat. [6]
Automatic memory management in the form of garbage collection is the most common technique for preventing some of the memory safety problems, since it prevents common memory safety errors like use-after-free for all data allocated within the language runtime. [11]
Java theory and practice: Fixing the Java Memory Model, part 1 - An article describing problems with the original Java memory model. Java theory and practice: Fixing the Java Memory Model, part 2 - Explains the changes JSR 133 made to the Java memory model. Java Memory Model Pragmatics (transcript) The Java Memory Model links; Java internal ...
A null pointer is usually represented as a pointer to address 0 in the address space; many operating systems set up the MMU to indicate that the page that contains that address is not in memory, and do not include that page in the virtual address space, so that attempts to read or write the memory referenced by a null pointer get an invalid ...
When the corrupted memory contents are used later in that program, it leads either to program crash or to strange and bizarre program behavior. Nearly 10% of application crashes on Windows systems are due to heap corruption. [1] Modern programming languages like C and C++ have powerful features of explicit memory management and pointer ...
If this overwrites adjacent data or executable code, this may result in erratic program behavior, including memory access errors, incorrect results, and crashes. Exploiting the behavior of a buffer overflow is a well-known security exploit. On many systems, the memory layout of a program, or the system as a whole, is well defined.