CreateSharedMemory Function (Windows)

CreateSharedMemory Function

CreateSharedMemory Function

The CreateSharedMemory function creates a section of memory that is shared by client processes and the security package.

C++

PVOID NTAPI CreateSharedMemory(
  __in  ULONG MaxSize,
  __in  ULONG InitialSize
);

The function returns a pointer to the block of shared memory, or NULL if the block was not reserved.

Creating a shared section for each client is not advisable because it is a very expensive operation and may exhaust system resources.

The package's clients can write to shared memory which makes it susceptible to attack. Data in the shared segment should not be trusted.

The pointer returned by the CreateSharedMemory function is required by the AllocateSharedMemory, DeleteSharedMemory, and FreeSharedMemory functions.

Use the DeleteSharedMemory function to release memory reserved by the CreateSharedMemory function.

Pointers to these functions are available in the LSA_SECPKG_FUNCTION_TABLE structure received by the SpInitialize function.