Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!hc!pprg.unm.edu!unmvax!bbx!russ
From: russ@bbx.UUCP (Russ Kepler)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: relative value of stripping symbols
Summary: dont use strip()
Message-ID: <889@bbx.UUCP>
Date: 27 Apr 89 16:05:46 GMT
References: <17615@cisunx.UUCP> <690011@hpfelg.HP.COM>
Reply-To: russ@bbx.UUCP (Russ Kepler)
Organization: BASIS Incorporated, Albuquerque NM
Lines: 22

In article <690011@hpfelg.HP.COM> jk@hpfelg.HP.COM (John Kessenich) writes:
>
>There may be another issue:  security.  Consider a program secured through
>some mechanism (e.g. CPU serial number) by a function in the executable 
>that checks the security mechanism and returns an appropriate value to 
>its calling function, which then acts on the result.  If the security 
>function has a meaningful name, having the symbol table present greatly 
>simplifies the task of a user editing the executable to effectively turn 
>off security checks.

If you are using 'strip' for security you should perhaps consider
using the '-s' option in 'ld' instead.  On one of the systems that
we ported to the 'strip' command simply set a pointer/flag to tell
'nm' that there weren't any symbols.  File size remained the same.

using 'cc -s' generated an executable considerably smaller...

-- 
Russ Kepler -  Basis International
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