See… the self-sync also uses embedded length codes and checksums. So we know where the next magic octets should appear. And if they are missing - as happens if the log file were clobbered - that allows us to simply skip to the next sync octet sequence. No massive overrun would occur.
If someone embeds an extreme length, then we can decide to reject it. Probably we make a convention that large data must be chunked into 64 kB sections or so. > On Dec 17, 2025, at 09:17, Stelian Ionescu <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> Had I used prefix-length encoding then an attacker could shove a packet with >> an enormous size and cause DOS by overwhelming my system resources. >> Self-sync can prevent that by looking only for the magic separators at known >> locations. >> > > Then an attacker will cause DOS by simply ommitting the magic separator :D > > -- > Stelian Ionescu >
