public inbox for gcc-bugs@sourceware.org help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: "muecker at gwdg dot de" <gcc-bugzilla@gcc.gnu.org> To: gcc-bugs@gcc.gnu.org Subject: [Bug middle-end/99797] accessing uninitialized automatic variables Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2021 05:43:50 +0000 [thread overview] Message-ID: <bug-99797-4-Q7i7PfDFOJ@http.gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/> (raw) In-Reply-To: <bug-99797-4@http.gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/> https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=99797 --- Comment #9 from Martin Uecker <muecker at gwdg dot de> --- The behavior of GCC is dangerous as the example in comment #1 show. You can not reason at all about the generated code. It is not just that the uninitialized value causes some random choice but it creates situation where seemingly impossible things can happen. Assume this propagates into another security relevant function which when analyzed independently appears completely safe, i.e. maintains some important property by carefully checking its inputs. But just having an uninitialized read somewhere else compromises the integrity of the whole program. Of course, if this is UB than this is technically allowed from the standard's point of view. But what the standard allows is one question. What a good compiler should do in case of undefined behavior is a completely different one. The "optimize based on the assumption that UB can not happen" philosophy amplifies even minor programming errors into something dangerous. This, of course, also applies to other UB (in varying degrees). For signed overflow we have -fsanitize=signed-integer-overflow which can help detect and mitigate such errors, e.g. by trapping at run-time. And also this is allowed by UB. In case of UB the choice of what to do lies with the compiler, but I think it is a bug if this choice is unreasonable and does not serve its users well.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-04-19 5:43 UTC|newest] Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top 2021-03-27 13:47 [Bug c/99797] New: " muecker at gwdg dot de 2021-03-27 19:19 ` [Bug c/99797] " pinskia at gcc dot gnu.org 2021-03-27 19:19 ` pinskia at gcc dot gnu.org 2021-03-28 6:32 ` muecker at gwdg dot de 2021-03-28 7:08 ` pinskia at gcc dot gnu.org 2021-03-28 7:16 ` pinskia at gcc dot gnu.org 2021-03-30 6:35 ` muecker at gwdg dot de 2021-04-14 20:18 ` muecker at gwdg dot de 2021-04-18 18:09 ` [Bug middle-end/99797] " pinskia at gcc dot gnu.org 2021-04-19 5:43 ` muecker at gwdg dot de [this message] 2021-04-19 10:43 ` vanyacpp at gmail dot com 2021-04-19 18:57 ` muecker at gwdg dot de 2021-04-20 15:20 ` msebor at gcc dot gnu.org
Reply instructions: You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email using any one of the following methods: * Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client, and reply-to-all from there: mbox Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style * Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to switches of git-send-email(1): git send-email \ --in-reply-to=bug-99797-4-Q7i7PfDFOJ@http.gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/ \ --to=gcc-bugzilla@gcc.gnu.org \ --cc=gcc-bugs@gcc.gnu.org \ /path/to/YOUR_REPLY https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html * If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header via mailto: links, try the mailto: linkBe sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox; as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).