What is a Memory Leak?
A memory leak is storage is allocated but that the program no longer needs. The most common mechanical criteria used to determine if a program still needs some bit of storage is whether that memory can be reached from the current call stack or global variables — that is, whether that memory is root reachable. Storage that is allocated but not root reachable is clearly a leak: there is no possible way for the program to use that storage again. Automatic storage reclamation, or garbage collection, releases storage that is allocated but not root reachable, and thereby precludes these kinds of leaks. Programs written in garbage collected languages, such as Java, can still have memory leaks: storage that is root reachable, but no longer needed by the program. One way to charaterise this kind of leak is storage that is no longer observably reachable: ie, if this storage were released, it would have no observable effect on the program, even though it is technically root reachable. Figure 1 sh
Memory leak refers to a condition in which an incremental but steady loss of computer memory seems to be taking place. Usually, the root cause of memory leak has to do with the malfunction of one or more programs. Essentially, the program fails to release memory that in no longer being used back into the pool of available memory. The result is that the used memory is not cleared for use by other computer programs, and thus diminishes the operating capacity of the computer. Just about any type of program can be the source for memory leak. In some cases, it may be an application program, such as a database, that resides on the hard drive. At other times, the cause of the memory leak could be one of the essential program files that drive the operating system for the computer. Generally, the malfunction within the application is the result of some sort of invasion into the program proper, such as a virus or bug. Even when the memory leak is relatively small, it can eventually cripple a sys
A memory leak is an implementation error that depletes the available memory on a system. As a process on a computer runs, its memory needs tend to vary, depending on exactly what the process is doing from one minute to the next. When the process needs more memory, it requests it from the operating system; when it no longer needs the additional memory, it should return it to the operating system so it can be allocated to other processes. If a process doesn’t correctly return memory to the operating system, the memory remains assigned to the process, even though the process is no longer using it, and the memory can’t be re-allocated. This effectively makes the section of memory unavailable. In this case, one of the processes that runs on Windows 2000 domain controllers has a memory leak that occurs only when certain invalid requests are made of it. What could an attacker do via this vulnerability? By repeatedly sending the domain controller the invalid request at issue here, an attacker
Memory leak is an existence of objects that are not needed anymore according to the application logic, but still retain memory and cannot be collected because they are referenced from other live objects, due to a bug in application itself. Obviously, each leaked object is accessible from at least one GC root or represents a GC root. In other words, for each leaked object there is always a path that starts from GC root(s) and contains (ends with) the leaked object.
A memory leak is a part of memory that has been allocated but never got freed after its use. The more often this occurs the more valuable memory will be wasted and taken away from other processes. In the worst case your application’s memory usage will exceed the physical memory size and finally crash the system when the limit of virtual memory is reached after a period of heavy hard disc activity.
