Re: [Xen-devel] RAM security

[George Dunlap <George.Dunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I looked into this sometime this last year.  I believe the answer is
"no": the domain destruction routines will zero memory before handing
it back to Xen.

One potential data leak, however (last time I looked at this), is that
Xen does not scrub memory handed back by the balloon driver.  So if
the guest OS hasn't scrubbed it, and it contains sensitive
information, it may end up being assigned to another domain as-is
(either via ballooning or start-of-day domain creation).  At the
moment that's considered the guest's responsibility.

 -George

On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Jonathan Tripathy <jonnyt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> In Xen, is a DomU able to access data in RAM which a previous DomU has
> stored in the past, but didn't "zero" it?
>
> I understand that this is a problem with physical disks (using phy:/), just
> wondering if the same stands with RAM
>
> Thanks
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-devel mailing list
> Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel
>
>

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel