banishing pointers in static domains
banishing pointers in static domains
Posted Feb 7, 2026 0:23 UTC (Sat) by Fowl (subscriber, #65667)In reply to: banishing pointers in static domains by Fowl
Parent article: Kernel control-flow-integrity support comes to GCC
Ahh reading the documentation (super power), it’s hinted that jump tables can be generated for the non-kernel CFI, but with static linking limitations.
> -fsanitize=kcfi
> This is an alternative indirect call control-flow integrity scheme designed for low-level system software, such as operating system kernels. Unlike -fsanitize=cfi-icall, it doesn’t require -flto, won’t result in function pointers being replaced with jump table references, and never breaks cross-DSO function address equality. These properties make KCFI easier to adopt in low-level software. KCFI is limited to checking only function pointers, and isn’t compatible with executable-only memory.
https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ControlFlowIntegrity.html?utm...
I guess being willing to make deeper changes to the code rather than sticking mostly inside the compiler could overcome that.