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
6bf67672.
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>
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)