ProPolice

ProPolice

ProPolice is a stack smashing protector developed by IBM and based on StackGuard.

It is a patchset for gcc designed to protect compiled applications from attacks which manipulate the stack (ie, buffer-overruns).

ProPolice will add the following options to gcc: 

    -fstack-protector        : Enable stack protection for functions which contain
                               character arrays.

    -fno-stack-protector     : Disable use of stack protection (ProPolice).

    -fstack-protector-all    : Enable stack protection for all functions.

    -fno-stack-protector-all : Disables stack protection for all functions.

The stack protection provided by ProPolice is specifically for the C and C++ languages.

ProPolice is currently used by OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD and IPCop. It is also optionally available in Gentoo Linux with the hardened USE flag.

See Also: