Crash a RISC machine from user-mode code:

[Bj|rn Munch]

In article <30273.26c33972 at ccavax.camb.com>, merriman at ccavax.camb.com writes:
|> In article <49041 at seismo.CSS.GOV>, 
|>     stead at beno.CSS.GOV (Richard Stead) writes:
|> [stuff deleted]
|> > Who could possibly care
|> > that a random instruction sequence crashes a risc box? 
|> 
|> Some villain wanting to mount a denial-of-service attack.

Or just about anyone running a buggy program.  It's bad enough that
the program crashes, you shouldn't have to risk (RISC :-)) bringing
the whole machine down or do unknown things to other processes.  And
there are always people running buggy programs, for example those who
are debugging them....

A compiler won't guarantee against executing "random" instructions.
You may forget to initialize a function pointer, or write past the end
of an array on the stack, thereby disrupting a return address.

Just my $.02 (15 |re) worth...

_______________________________________________________________________
Bj|rn Munch                  | Div. of Comp. Science & Telematics,
bjornmu at idt.unit.no          | Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH),
PhD Student (well, soon...)  | Trondheim, Norway