[Bug ld/29956] mn10300 linker always triggers LOAD segment with RWX permissions test by default

[nickc at redhat dot com]

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=29956

--- Comment #3 from Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com> ---
(In reply to Mike Frysinger from comment #2)
> is the RWX check useful for ELF (bare-metal) targets in general ?

Eh - it is debatable.  On the one hand, any RWX segment is a potential weak
point that attackers might try to exploit, and programs running on bare metal
may still need to be security aware.

On the other hand, if you are building a bare metal based system then
presumably you know what you are doing and what the potential vulnerabilities
are likely to be.

I do not think that the linker can make a judgement call on this.  It is up to
the programmers and toolchain creators to decide what is best.  There are
linker command line options to disable the warnings, and binutils configure
options to change the default behaviour, so things can be customized.

But correctly identifying "safe" bare metal configurations vs "vulnerable" bare
metal configurations ?  This is something that the linker cannot do.

Overall I think that it is better that the linker defaults to generating these
warnings, and having discussions like this one, than to have the linker default
to ignoring the issue and someone not realizing that there is a potential
problem.

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