hardening-check

HARDENING-CHECK(1)                                          HARDENING-CHECK(1)

NAME
       hardening-check - check binaries for security hardening features

SYNOPSIS
       hardening-check [options] [ELF ...]

       Examine a given set of ELF binaries and check for several security
       hardening features, failing if they are not all found.

DESCRIPTION
       This utility checks a given list of ELF binaries for several security
       hardening features that can be compiled into an executable. These
       features are:

       Position Independent Executable
               This indicates that the executable was built in such a way
               (PIE) that the "text" section of the program can be relocated
               in memory. To take full advantage of this feature, the
               executing kernel must support text Address Space Layout
               Randomization (ASLR).

       Stack Protected
               This indicates that there is evidence that the ELF was compiled
               with the gcc(1) option -fstack-protector (e.g. uses
               __stack_chk_fail). The program will be resistant to having its
               stack overflowed.

               When an executable was built without any character arrays being
               allocated on the stack, this check will lead to false alarms
               (since there is no use of __stack_chk_fail), even though it was
               compiled with the correct options.

       Fortify Source functions
               This indicates that the executable was compiled with
               -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 and -O1 or higher. This causes certain
               unsafe glibc functions with their safer counterparts (e.g.
               strncpy instead of strcpy), or replaces calls that are
               verifiable at runtime with the runtime-check version (e.g.
               __memcpy_chk insteade of memcpy).

               When an executable was built such that the fortified versions
               of the glibc functions are not useful (e.g. use is verified as
               safe at compile time, or use cannot be verified at runtime),
               this check will lead to false alarms.  In an effort to mitigate
               this, the check will pass if any fortified function is found,
               and will fail if only unfortified functions are found.
               Uncheckable conditions also pass (e.g. no functions that could
               be fortified are found, or not linked against glibc).

       Read-only relocations
               This indicates that the executable was build with -Wl,-z,relro
               to have ELF markings (RELRO) that ask the runtime linker to
               mark any regions of the relocation table as "read-only" if they
               were resolved before execution begins. This reduces the
               possible areas of memory in a program that can be used by an
               attacker that performs a successful memory corruption exploit.

       Immediate binding
               This indicates that the executable was built with -Wl,-z,now to
               have ELF markings (BIND_NOW) that ask the runtime linker to
               resolve all relocations before starting program execution. When
               combined with RELRO above, this further reduces the regions of
               memory available to memory corruption attacks.

OPTIONS
       --nopie, -p
               Do not require that the checked binaries be built as PIE.

       --nostackprotector, -s
               Do not require that the checked binaries be built with the
               stack protector.

       --nofortify, -f
               Do not require that the checked binaries be built with Fortify
               Source.

       --norelro, -r
               Do not require that the checked binaries be built with RELRO.

       --nobindnow, -b
               Do not require that the checked binaries be built with
               BIND_NOW.

       --quiet, -q
               Only report failures.

       --verbose, -v
               Report verbosely on failures.

       --report-functions, -R
               After the report, display all external functions needed by the
               ELF.

       --find-libc-functions, -F
               Instead of the regular report, locate the libc for the first
               ELF on the command line and report all the known "fortified"
               functions exported by libc.

       --color, -c
               Enable colorized status output.

       --lintian, -l
               Switch reporting to lintian-check-parsable output.

       --debug Report some debugging during processing.

       --help, -h, -?
               Print a brief help message and exit.

       --man, -H
               Print the manual page and exit.

RETURN VALUE
       When all checked binaries have all checkable hardening features
       detected, this program will finish with an exit code of 0. If any check
       fails, the exit code with be 1. Individual checks can be disabled via
       command line options.

AUTHOR
       Kees Cook <kees@debian.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
       Copyright 2009-2013 Kees Cook <kees@debian.org>.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
       under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
       Free Software Foundation; version 2 or later.

SEE ALSO
       gcc(1), hardening-wrapper(1)

Debian Utilities                  2020-02-13                HARDENING-CHECK(1)