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Forum Discussion

Kent_Perrier_50's avatar
Kent_Perrier_50
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Feb 28, 2011

Consequences of hiding the NX/DX flag

Our VM admins want us to hide the NX/DX flag from all of our VMs. The OVA files comes with it exposed to the guest. What are the implications of hiding that flag?     Kent  
ve
virtualization
hwidjaja_37598's avatar
hwidjaja_37598
Icon for Altostratus rankAltostratus
Mar 01, 2011
I don't think there is any consequence of hiding this flag. It's not used for a performance boost but more towards security feature *CMIIW*

 

 

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_bit :

 

 

NX/DX is used to mark certain areas of memory as non-executable so CPU will refuse to execute any code residing this area. This technique is used to prevent a malicious software from inserting their code into another program's data storage area and running their own code from within this section (aka. buffer overflow attack).