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Q&A What are the concrete security risks of forcibly terminating a process?

I'm using the Gnome System Monitor in Linux Mint. Whenever I attempt to "End" or "Kill" a process, I am given this warning via a modal dialog (emphasis mine): Killing a process may destroy data,...

2 answers  ·  posted 1y ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 7mo ago by Kamil Maciorowski‭

Question security kill
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Karl Knechtel‭ · 2023-09-13T04:18:39Z (about 1 year ago)
What are the concrete security risks of forcibly terminating a process?
I'm using the Gnome System Monitor in Linux Mint. Whenever I attempt to "End" or "Kill" a process, I am given this warning via a modal dialog (emphasis mine):

> Killing a process may destroy data, break the session *or introduce a security risk*. Only unresponsive processes should be killed.

(Similarly with "end" instead of "kill" as appropriate.)

It makes sense that in-memory data could be corrupted (or not written to disk when it ought to be) when a process ends abnormally (not under its own control), and that certain processes might be necessary for the login session to work properly. But what security risks can be introduced this way, and how? (And if a process is indeed unresponsive, do I have options other than killing it or waiting?)