Re: [PATCH] Kbuild: Disable the -Wformat-security gcc flag

From: Robert Hancock
Date: Wed Feb 04 2009 - 18:49:33 EST


Roland Dreier wrote:
> Before judging on this patch could you please post what warning it
> triggers and one or a few patches to fix some of them.

The warnings are things like:

init/main.c: In function 'start_kernel':
init/main.c:557: warning: format not a string literal and no format arguments

where the patch to fix this would be:

diff --git a/init/main.c b/init/main.c
index 8442094..78fc0d8 100644
--- a/init/main.c
+++ b/init/main.c
@@ -554,7 +554,7 @@ asmlinkage void __init start_kernel(void)
boot_cpu_init();
page_address_init();
printk(KERN_NOTICE);
- printk(linux_banner);
+ printk("%s", linux_banner);
setup_arch(&command_line);
mm_init_owner(&init_mm, &init_task);
setup_command_line(command_line);

with the impact:

add/remove: 0/0 grow/shrink: 1/0 up/down: 7/0 (7)
function old new delta
start_kernel 689 696 +7

Just how many of these warnings are showing up? In the cases you posted it's presumably no problem, but if the string could either a) be potentially set by a malicious user or b) accidentally contain printk format characters then this code has a risk that things could blow up..
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