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Compiler Optimizations

1 GoKawiil brief on this topic

Researcher Chris Domas warns compiler optimizations can silently erase security code

At Black Hat USA, security researcher Chris Domas told David Bombal that compilers can legally strip out security-critical operations like memory-clearing code, even when source code follows best practices. He demonstrated how subtle factors such as data size, register pressure and structure layout can determine whether an optimized binary is safe or exploitable, with some byte sizes producing secure code and nearby sizes producing vulnerable output.