Re: [PATCH][AVR] fix unsafe uses of sprintf

[Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi mszanetti,

[Sorry for the delay in replying to your email]

> Sorry I am just a NOOB ... What should I do to use the patch for fixing the
> issue below?

Short answer: Apply it to the sources and rebuild the toolchain.

Long answer: Get hold of a copy of the binutils sources.  Either the 
current release (2.19.1) or the latest development sources.  See:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/binutils.html

For details on how to get the sources.  Then apply the patch to the 
sources.  This is normally done using the "patch" program which is 
installed on most systems, (well at least those that have been set up to 
do development work), but you can also apply it by hand.  The patch file 
makes it fairly obvious what is being done.

Next build a new toolchain.  See the file binutils/README in the sources 
for some help on this.  You will want to configure your toolchain for 
the avr target so you will probably do something like this:

  % mkdir build
  % cd build
  % <path-to-patched-sources>/configure --target=avr-elf 
--prefix=/<where-to-install-the-new-toolchain>
  % make
  % make install

Now you can use the patched and rebuilt toolchain and rejoice in the 
knowledge that you are not going to run into trouble over an esoteric 
and highly unlikely buffer overflow bug. :-)

Cheers
  Nick