[ale] Memory leak (hacked?)

[jknapka at kneuro.net (Joe Knapka)]

David Corbin <dcorbin at machturtle.com> writes:

> The other possibility that occurred to me, is that it might be a
> kernel bug of some type, which might explain the memory consumption
> not being assigned to a process.

Yes. A hardware failure that prevents the kernel from properly
cleaning up resources associated with a device could cause this.

Or, you may be hacked. A clever intruder can insert modules
into the kernel (which is why a public server shouldn't have
module load/unload enabled), and can also hide the fact that
he's done so. A malicious module that simply allocated
pages as fast as it could would cause the behavior you're
seeing.

-- Joe

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