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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 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>