These two techniques make it harder to come up with exploits, by reducing what is commonly called the "attack surface" in security circles: by making the addresses less predictable, and by making it harder to inject data that is then (mis-)interpreted as code, this hardens Git's executables on Windows.
These patches have been carried in Git for Windows for over 3 years, and should therefore be considered battle-tested. Changes since v1: * When determining whether we build with optimization, -O0 and -Og are explicitly ignored. İsmail Dönmez (2): mingw: do not let ld strip relocations mingw: enable DEP and ASLR config.mak.uname | 8 ++++++++ 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+) base-commit: 83232e38648b51abbcbdb56c94632b6906cc85a6 Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-134%2Fdscho%2Faslr-v2 Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-134/dscho/aslr-v2 Pull-Request: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/134 Range-diff vs v1: 1: e6acdba586 = 1: 828913e96c mingw: do not let ld strip relocations 2: e142c1396e ! 2: 9f1da73829 mingw: enable DEP and ASLR @@ -21,13 +21,13 @@ --- a/config.mak.uname +++ b/config.mak.uname @@ - ifeq ($(shell expr "$(uname_R)" : '2\.'),2) + ifneq ($(shell expr "$(uname_R)" : '1\.'),2) # MSys2 prefix = /usr/ + # Enable DEP + BASIC_LDFLAGS += -Wl,--nxcompat + # Enable ASLR (unless debugging) -+ ifneq (,$(findstring -O,$(CFLAGS))) ++ ifneq (,$(findstring -O,$(filter-out -O0 -Og,$(CFLAGS)))) + BASIC_LDFLAGS += -Wl,--dynamicbase + endif ifeq (MINGW32,$(MSYSTEM)) -- gitgitgadget
