compiler-hardening

compiler-hardening is a skill for Claude Code from RedHatProductSecurity/prodsec-skills. It costs 38 tokens per session (1,139 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A guide for adding compiler and linker settings that make C and C++ programs harder to exploit. It also covers sanitizers, which detect certain memory and undefined-behavior errors during testing.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when reviewing or changing Makefiles, CMake files, build settings, or CI pipelines for native C or C++ software.
Why use it?
It helps reduce the impact of problems such as buffer overflows, memory misuse, and some dependency or executable-loading attacks.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the prodsec-skills plugin — 133 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it when reviewing or changing Makefiles, CMake files, build settings, or CI pipelines for native C or C++ software.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/redhatproductsecurity/prodsec-skills/compiler-hardening
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add RedHatProductSecurity/prodsec-skills --skill compiler-hardening
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/RedHatProductSecurity/prodsec-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install prodsec-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 133 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for compiler-hardening

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/redhatproductsecurity/prodsec-skills/compiler-hardening/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/redhatproductsecurity/prodsec-skills/compiler-hardening)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/redhatproductsecurity/prodsec-skills/compiler-hardening"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/redhatproductsecurity/prodsec-skills/compiler-hardening/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for compiler-hardening

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/redhatproductsecurity/prodsec-skills/compiler-hardening"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/redhatproductsecurity/prodsec-skills/compiler-hardening.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,139 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00038 $0.01139
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.00570
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00228
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00114

Measured 11d ago against content hash abf15e04fe51, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

compiler-hardening scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

module/skills/compiler-hardening/SKILL.md · 88 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 88 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Compiler Hardening

Common Vulnerability Classes

Category Examples
Memory errors Buffer overflow, use-after-free (UAF), buffer over-read
Dependency attacks Library hijacking, library sideloading, supply chain compromise

Hardening Flags

When building with Fedora/RPM toolchains, hardened flags are often applied automatically. For other build systems, explicitly add hardening options.

The OpenSSF Compiler Hardening Guide is the canonical reference. Key flags include:

Flag Purpose
-fstack-protector-strong Stack buffer overflow detection
-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 Runtime buffer overflow checks for standard library functions
-fPIE / -pie Position-independent executable for ASLR
-Wl,-z,relro,-z,now Full RELRO -- makes GOT read-only after relocation
-Wl,-z,noexecstack Non-executable stack
-fno-strict-overflow Prevent undefined behavior optimizations on signed overflow

GCC 14+ provides -fhardened as a convenience flag that enables a recommended set of hardening options.

The Fedora Security Features Matrix provides an overview of security features available in a modern Linux system.

Sanitizers

Sanitizers add runtime instrumentation that catches errors during testing that would otherwise go undetected. They increase binary size and resource consumption but provide significantly better error detection and debug information than traditional tooling.

Sanitizer Flag Detects
AddressSanitizer -fsanitize=address Memory access violations (buffer overflow, UAF, stack overflow)
ThreadSanitizer -fsanitize=thread Data races and race conditions
LeakSanitizer -fsanitize=leak Memory leaks
UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer -fsanitize=undefined Undefined behavior at runtime

Read the full file on GitHub · 88 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 88 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A abf15e04fe51

Subscribe to this mod's changes

compiler-hardening is a skill published in the GitHub repository RedHatProductSecurity/prodsec-skills (52 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 1,139 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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