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Add '-fno-delete-null-pointer-checks' to gcc CFLAGS
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Turning on this flag could prevent the compiler from optimising away
some "useless" checks for null pointers.  Such bugs can sometimes become
exploitable at compile time because of the -O2 optimisation.

See http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.1.2/gcc/Optimize-Options.html

An example that clearly shows this 'problem' is commit 6bf6767.

 static void __devexit agnx_pci_remove(struct pci_dev *pdev)
 {
     struct ieee80211_hw *dev = pci_get_drvdata(pdev);
-    struct agnx_priv *priv = dev->priv;
+    struct agnx_priv *priv;
     AGNX_TRACE;

     if (!dev)
         return;
+    priv = dev->priv;

By reverting this patch, and compile it with and without
-fno-delete-null-pointer-checks flag, we can see that the check for dev
is compiled away.

    call    printk  #
-   testq   %r12, %r12  # dev
-   je  .L94    #,
    movq    %r12, %rdi  # dev,

Clearly the 'fix' is to stop using dev before it is tested, but building
with -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks flag at least makes it harder to
abuse.

Signed-off-by: Eugene Teo <eugeneteo@kernel.sg>
Acked-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Wang Cong <amwang@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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Eugene Teo authored and torvalds committed Jul 16, 2009
1 parent 4a21b8c commit a3ca86a
Showing 1 changed file with 2 additions and 1 deletion.
3 changes: 2 additions & 1 deletion Makefile
Expand Up @@ -343,7 +343,8 @@ KBUILD_CPPFLAGS := -D__KERNEL__
KBUILD_CFLAGS := -Wall -Wundef -Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs \
-fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common \
-Werror-implicit-function-declaration \
-Wno-format-security
-Wno-format-security \
-fno-delete-null-pointer-checks
KBUILD_AFLAGS := -D__ASSEMBLY__

# Read KERNELRELEASE from include/config/kernel.release (if it exists)
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