In response to a public outcry the strings program now defaults to using the
--all option which displays text from anywhere in the input file(s). The
default used to be --data, which only displays text from loadable data sections,
but this requires the use of the BFD library. Since the BFD library almost
certainly still contains buffer overrun and/or memory corruption bugs, and
since the strings program is often used to examine malicious code, it was
decided that the --data option option represents a possible security risk.
* strings.c: Add new command line option --data to only scan the
initialized, loadable data secions of binaries. Choose the
default behaviour of --all or --data based upon a configure
option.
* doc/binutils.texi (strings): Update documentation. Include
description of why the --data option might be unsafe.
* configure.ac: Add new option --disable-default-strings-all which
restores the old behaviour of strings using --data by default. If
the option is not used make strings use --all by default.
* NEWS: Mention the new behaviour of strings.
* configure: Regenerate.
* config.in: Regenerate.