Ubuntu Manpage: hardening-check - check binaries for security hardening features

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.

       --nocfprotection, -b
               Do not require that the checked binaries be built with control flow protection.

       --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.