glibc

Stack clash mitigation in GCC, Part 3

Stack clash mitigation in GCC, Part 3

jeffreyalaw
By Jeff Law

In previous posts, Stack Clash Mitigation in GCC — Background and Stack Clash mitigation in GCC: Why -fstack-check is not the answer, I hopefully showed the basics of how stack clash attacks are structured and why GCC’s existing -fstack-check mechanism is insufficient for protection.

So, what should we do? Clearly we want something similar to -fstack-check, but without the fundamental problems. Enter a new option: -fstack-clash-protection.

The key principles for code generation to prevent a stack clash attack are:

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Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE parity between Clang and GCC

Toward _FORTIFY_SOURCE parity between Clang and GCC

sguelton
By Serge Guelton

GCC combined with glibc can detect instances of buffer overflow by standard C library functions. When a user passes the -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE={1,2} preprocessor flag and an optimization level greater or equal to -O1, an alternate, fortified implementation of the function is used when calling, say, strcpy. Depending on the function and its inputs, this behavior may result in a compile-time error, or a runtime error triggered upon execution. (For more info on this feature, there’s an excellent blog post here on the subject).

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Implicit function declarations: flex’s use of “reallocarray”

Implicit function declarations: flex’s use of “reallocarray”

ashankar
By Arjun Shankar

Several months ago, I took over the maintenance of the flex package in Fedora and decided to kick the tires by rebasing the package in Fedora Rawhide. I downloaded and hashed the latest tarball at the time, flex-2.6.4, tweaked the spec file, and fired up a local build. Unfortunately, it failed with a SIGSEGV at build time:

./stage1flex -o stage1scan.c ./scan.l
make[2]: *** [Makefile:1695: stage1scan.c] Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Some debugging with gdb led me to the conclusion that the segmentation fault was the result of a block of memory returned from the reallocarray function being written to during flex initialization.  In this article, I’ll describe the issue further and explain changes made to address it.

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A platform interface for the GNU C Library

A platform interface for the GNU C Library

codonell
By Carlos O'Donell

Application developers continue to need newer versions of libraries, including core runtimes like GNU C Library (glibc), for their applications. In this article, I’ll look at some issues related to upgrading glibc in an operating system (OS) distribution, and I also encourage you to read Florian Weimer’s excellent blog post on the topic.

The problem

Deciding between a library rebase or continued backporting of commits involves a complex set of risks and rewards. For some customers and users, it is important not to rebase the library (ensuring the lowest risk of impact by change); but for others, the rebase brings valuable bug fixes (lowest risk of impact from known issues). In other cases, the newer library may perform better, even if the interfaces haven’t changed, because it can take advantage of newer hardware or a newer Linux kernel (performance advantage to first mover).

There is no way to simultaneously satisfy all the requirements of slow-moving versus fast-moving development. The recent work in Fedora Modularity is aimed at solving the root of this problem, but there is a limit to this work. The further down the stack you go, the harder the problem becomes. The potential for breakage further up the stack increases. You can’t always arbitrarily change a component’s installed version without consequences, either at build time or at runtime.

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The Non-complexity of /etc/nsswitch.conf

The Non-complexity of /etc/nsswitch.conf

djdelorie
By DJ Delorie

In most glibc-based operating systems, there’s a file /etc/nsswitch.conf that most people ignore, few people understand, but all people generally rely on. This file determines where the system finds things like host names, passwords, and protocol numbers. Does your company use LDAP? NIS? Plain files? The nsswitch file (it stands for “name services switch”) tells the system what service to use for each type of name lookup.

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GNU Toolchain Update – Spring 2018

GNU Toolchain Update – Spring 2018

nickclifton
By Nick Clifton

The GNU Toolchain is a collection of programming tools produced by the GNU Project. The tools are often packaged together due to their common use for developing software applications, operating systems, and low-level software for embedded systems.

This blog is part of a series (see: Fall 2017 Update) covering the latest changes and improvements in the components that make up this Toolchain. Apart from the announcement of new releases, the features described here are at the bleeding edge of software development in the tools. This means that it may be awhile before they make it into production releases, and they might not be fully functional yet. But anyone who is interested in experimenting with them can build their own copy of the Toolchain and then try them out.

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Fall 2017 GNU Toolchain Update

Fall 2017 GNU Toolchain Update

nickclifton
By Nick Clifton

The GNU Toolchain is a collection of programming tools produced by the GNU Project. The tools are often packaged together due to their common use for developing software applications, operating systems, and low-level software for embedded systems.

This blog is part of a regular series covering the latest changes and improvements in the components that make up this Toolchain. Apart from the announcement of new releases, however, the features described here are at the bleeding edge of software development in the tools. This does mean that it may be a while before they make it into production releases, and they might not be fully functional yet. But anyone who is interested in experimenting with them can build their own copy of the Toolchain and then try them out.

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Adding buffer overflow detection to string functions

Adding buffer overflow detection to string functions

florianweimer
By Florian Weimer

This article describes the steps required to add buffer overflow protection to string functions. As a real-world example, we use the strlcpy function, which is implemented in the libbsd library on some GNU/Linux systems.

This kind of buffer overflow protection uses a GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) feature for array size tracking (“source fortification”), accessed through the __builtin_object_size GCC built-in function. In general, these checks are added in a size-checking wrapper function around the original (wrapped) function, which is strlcpy in our example.

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